The guy in the beginning sounds like Spacey. So how is it is a twist that it is Spacey?
shareThis movie is idiotic on every level, especially in terms of this twist. It's not a twist to have the one guy hyping up Keyser Soze be Keyser Soze. It's a Scooby Doo episode, where the one character who talks about a ghost or goblin or whatever always winds up being the ghost or the goblin.
shareThe main twist is that pretty much everything that happened in the movie is a lie.
shareSo many people fail to understand this.
shareAgreed w/ MCguy & Strategy
Learning that Verbal killed Keaton isn't an earth-shattering twist; there were no gasps in the theater like there were when Darth Vader said what he said or Bruce Willis learned what he learned.
The killer's face was hidden, yet Keaton not only knows the killer but thinks his identity is something of a joke. That already implies the killer is one of the "Usual Suspects." For anyone who's seen a movie before, Keaton's reaction pretty much guarantees it's either Verbal or Edie, and it didn't sound like Edie.
The twist was learning how MUCH of Verbal's story was bullshit based only on Rabin's bulletin board.
Consider: there's no dramatic punch from learning that Verbal was the killer. It had to be someone we've seen, and only Verbal is left.
BUT, there IS a dramatic punch from seeing Kujan looking over the bulletin board. It's classic hubris: the cocky cop who thinks he has it all figured out gets it rubbed in his face just how wrong he was.
That's the satisfying part.
In my opinion anyhoo
What's your thoughts on this - MacManus says to Keaton "I just saw the strangest thing (or something similar)." My thought is he is referring to seeing Verbal in Kiser Sozer mode and that Kiser stabbed him.
He just says, "... strangest thing." Could've been "I saw the ..." or could've been "Isn't this the ..."
Either way, I agree he's reacting to having been stabbed. Figure he got stabbed, turned to see Verbal, and just started walking away in shock (both physical and emotional)
Like Kujan and Keaton, McManus has had to rethink everything he's assumed up to that point.
That's why I maintain that this was more about a "twist" from the characters' perspective, less so the audience's.
Like "Columbo" mysteries -- the only person surprised at the end is the killer
I love this film.
sharewhen Darth Vader said what he said or Bruce Willis learned what he learned.
Most of it wasn't a lie though, he just omitted or left out/added certain details. Like all the cops who went down? That would have been too highly publicized in the media to lie about.
shareThere were certain parts that definitely happened, but I'd say that most of it could not be corroborated. It's more than just details.
shareYou have to look at when it came out, too. There weren't a lot of "twists" like this in cinema at the time. So back then we thought it was the second-coming of Jesus. Then "The Sixth Sense" came and pretty much made twists mandatory. Now there have been a million twists since then done much better.
sharea million twists since then done much better or in many cases telegraphed early in the first act.
shareRight. We've seen them all before and we know all the plot-points and signs now. That's the one thing Usual Suspects did not have going for it if you saw it in the 90's - so it worked at that time.
But now? It's laughably obvious to someone who's been coherent since 2000. I still blame M. Knight for introducing the "there's got to be a twist!" rule to everything.
It’s not really M Night’s fault if people copy his shit, plus big twist movies like Usual Suspects and Scream came out before Sixth Sense.
Well Planet of the Apes did a twist just as big as those movies and that came out over 20 years earlier. The thing about The Usual Suspects in particular is that it keeps hitting you over the head with reveals in its final 10 minutes or so. It doesn't just reveal that Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze, it reveals that he made up lies off the bulletin board, that he doesn't have a limp, and that finally he was in collaboration with Kobayashi.
shareI never said there were no twists - I was just saying not every movie had to have one.
shareI know, I'm just giving a movie that did this way before its dues. Although the way The Usual Suspects did it, as I said with multiple reveals, is why I think it deserves extra credit and why it's still one of the best twists, even if due to its age it has lost some of its wow factor.
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