SPOILERS AHEAD.
I really liked the 1995 film The Usual Suspects. I knew going into it that there was a big twist ending, and I wonder if that affected my viewing of the film. In terms of storyline, I enjoyed the complicated plot and the mysterious characters. The concept was really interesting as well. While Kevin Spacey may not be the best person, his performance in this film is great, as are those of Stephen Baldwin (similarly controversial), Benicio Del Toro, Gabriel Byrne, and Kevin Pollak. This is a very white-man-heavy movie, as you may have noticed—but I guess that a suspect line-up is supposed to have similar looking people?
Anyway, back to the ending. I loved the way that the ending was handled: the intense music building as Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) looks at the board behind him and puts together that Verbal (Spacey) has been fabricating his entire story, the shot of Verbal’s limp slowly turning into a regular walk, and the scene of him getting in the car, driving away forever. However, I find the unreliable narrator ending a little unfulfilling. So was the whole 2 hours of my life that I just spent watching this a lie? What of Verbal’s story was true, if any of it? It is interesting that I don’t really feel angry with him—I even wanted him to get away as he did. But still, it kind of ruins the whole story because we don’t really know what happened. Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot. Maybe, knowing the ending, I should watch it again to have some of those questions answered!
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