They look a little like a musical score.
I was fortunate to see The Usual Suspects (1995) at the theater when it first came out. And I saw it cold – I didn’t read any reviews, I’d just call the theater to see if I recognized the show and, if not, I’d go. That made seeing it quite a revelation. And now I’ve had the pleasure of introducing my Arts Editor to it, albeit in a slightly neutered edited-for-TV version. (It leads me to wonder what TV will do to the “… gleefully profane …” Deadpool (2016), but that’s a subject for another day.)
This is a noir movie at its best, with a lot of sunlight to contrast with the dark lives the helpless characters are leading. Five ex-convicts are rounded up by the cops for a crime and interrogated, to little direct effect – but they know each other, more or less, and begin to form a team that can perform sophisticated robberies, even kill.
But they’re being setup, by the greatest criminal of them all, Keyser Soze. He wants them to assassinate the man who can identify him and lead the world’s cops to him. But they don’t know it – all they know is that there’s an Argentinean drug gang that Soze wants put out of business, and they will deal a deadly blow in that war – for a great deal of money.
So where are the drugs?
This movie has a daring, confusing plot, excellent performances by all the actors, and a director more than willing to play with time, space, and the audience’s perceptions of what has, may, and may not have happened
Recommended. But don’t see the TV version.
