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The Usual Suspects - What Is Real?

© Copyright 2000, Jim Loy

The Usual Suspects is a great movie. In my list of favorite movies, I say " Very clever, brutal story. Won Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Wonderfully confusing, and is cleared up beautifully at the end." If you have not yet seen this movie, do not read this essay. See the movie first, as this essay gives away the ending, and some other secrets.

What is real? Almost the entire movie is told by Verbal, and he is obviously making a lot of it up.

• Was there a Keyser Soze? Yes of course.
• Did the police know about Keyser Soze before? Agent Kujan does not seem to have known about him. But the FBI agent at the hospital certainly perked up when the Hungarian said "Keyser Soze." He seems to have known about him. And Verbal speaks of him as if he were a legend.
• Was Keyser Soze Turkish, and did he kill his family? Hard to tell, but Verbal does not seem Turkish. I would say that was a lie.
• Did the five hijack New York's Finest Taxi Service? Apparently. It may be a lie, though.
• Did they hijack a van and kill some people? Apparently. That too may be a lie. But the police would probably know about this crime. There seems to be little reason for Verbal to confess to a real crime that he did not commit.
• Did they end up with drugs, when it should have been money? And was this crime commissioned by a guy named Redfoot in California? Verbal made up the name. Maybe the rest was a lie.
• Was Keyser Soze's assistant named Kobayashi? No, that is a Japanese name, which Verbal got from the bottom of the coffee cup.
• Did the five guys threaten to kill Keyser Soze's assistant? That may be a lie.
• Did Keyser Soze's assistant threaten Keaton's girl friend? That may be a lie. But Keyser Soze did force the five to attack the ship. Verbal claimed that Keyser Soze had evidence of each man's previous crimes.
• At the end, did Agent Kujan figure out that Verbal was Keyser Soze? I doubt it. Verbal's lies do not seem to suggest in any way that he was Keyser Soze. Agent Kujan had not seen the fax, with Verbal's picture yet.

By the way, the whole story, from beginning to end (all the crimes, all the deaths), was set up by Keyser Soze, to kill a witness (on the ship) who could identify him. He failed, as he apparently did not know about the Hungarian in the hospital who could now identify him. Now, the police can identify him.

A few things may be hard to believe. Keyser Soze apparently arranged the lineup at the beginning, in order to throw these five criminals together, so they will commit crimes together. How does that work? I don't see that they would have any incentive to work together.

So the hijacking of the van produced drugs instead of money. To criminals, aren't drugs as good as money?

All that gunplay goes on, in and around the ship, and the police arrive very late. We never hear a siren. I received email asking about that.

Agent Kujan told Verbal that he would get answers out of him because "I'm smarter than you." Does that work, especially when Verbal is a known con artist?

Addendum:

OK, a friend of mine suggests that even though Agent Kujan cannot logically deduce that Verbal is Keyser Soze, he can intuitively leap to that conclusion. I didn't think so, but now I agree. Thinking back, I too leaped to that conclusion without sufficient evidence. I had forgotten the opening sequence when Keaton recognizes Keyser Soze. But maybe I had the additional clue that this was fiction, and the story would make so much sense, and be so much more satisfying, if Verbal is Keyser Soze. If the story were real, that would probably be too bizarre for me to believe.

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