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The Usual Suspects

Certificate 18

running time 1hr 46 mins

Director Bryan Singer

For the first half hour of The Usual Suspects I was wondering whether all of the fuss I had heard about it was valid. It seemed that I was merely watching a run of the mill TV drama - cops versus robbers in a fairly complicated plot. But where was it going? Nowhere, it seemed, until the the latter half where The Usual Suspects exploded into one of the most amazing films of the year.

The film has an array of low profile stars whose careers should be reinvented and boosted by their strong performances here. Kevin Spacey plays the shy Verbal Kent, Gabriel Byrne the ex-crook Keaton and Pete Postlethwaite the lawyer Kobeyashi. The plot snakes through time with a lot of retrospective scenes but is centred around the events of one day when five known criminals are called into a NYPD line up following a gun heist. The five vaguely know each other and decide to work together on a jewellery robbery which is successful; so they repeat the exercise in Los Angeles.

In LA they they hear of an infamous Turkish gangland boss (Kaiser Sause), whose ruthlessness has earnt him international fear amongst the criminal underworld. Many say he is only a myth yet the five companions decide to work with him via his lawyer representative.

What follows cannot be placed into a review because the whole feel of the film is so drastically altered (and improved) by the final hour - by revealing too much about the finale before seeing it would ruin its' impact.

I can't recommend this film highly enough and if you haven't been enlightened about where this film goes then you must go and see it now. (DJW)