The Usual Suspects(1995)

R
1h 46m

Release Date: Aug 18, 1995 | Moderate

The sole survivor of a pier shoot-out tells the story of how a notorious criminal influenced the events that began with five criminals meeting in a seemingly random police lineup.

Releases

Original Release | Aug 18, 1995

Sep 1, 1995 | Moderate

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Box Office Results

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$645,363
Total US & Canada:
$23,341,568
Total Worldwide:
$23,341,568

Current Showtimes

Your Location or

(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

Bryan Singer
Director

Pete Postlethwaite
Kobayashi

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby SR,Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States,Germany

Language: English,Hungarian,Spanish,French

Summaries

Plot Summary

Hardened criminal Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) lies badly wounded on a ship docked in San Pedro Bay. He is confronted by a mysterious figure he calls "Keyser," (Scott B. Morgan), who shoots him dead and sets fire to the ship. The next day, the police recover 27 bodies and only two survivors: Arkosh Kovash ("Akos Kovacs"), a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns, and Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), a con artist with cerebral palsy. U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) flies to Los Angeles from New York City to interrogate Verbal. The men are left alone in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin (Dan Hedaya) while FBI agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) visits a hospitalized Kovash. The events that led Keaton, Verbal, and their associates onto the ship are then described by Verbal via flashback.Six weeks earlier in New York City, Keaton (who has a lawyer girlfriend) and Verbal (Verbal has a limp and a disabled arm) meet career criminals Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Fred Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), and Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak) in a police lineup after they are arrested as the usual suspects in a truck hijacking (the truck was full of guns) that none of them participated in. Believing the police were unfairly harassing them (the police had nothing to go on and were hoping that one of them would slip up and give them something to go on). Keaton was trying to get investors for his restaurant business when he was arrested, so now the investors won't touch him. He is bailed by his girlfriend Edie. Keaton knows he is finished in NYC.The newly assembled group decide to pull a heist to get revenge on the NYPD. Led by Keaton (who was convinced by Verbal), they rob a jewel smuggler being escorted by corrupt cops (for a few hundred dollars per mile, NYPD cops would escort smugglers and drug dealers all over town), netting millions in emeralds, and getting over fifty cops arrested (all of whom were involved in the escort racket. This was due to an anonymous phone call from Keaton to Internal affairs that led them straight to the emerald escort site, before the cops could arrive). They then go to California to fence the jewels through a man named Redfoot (Peter Greene), who connects them with another jewel heist. The heist goes badly (the jeweler and his bodyguards have to be shot dead and his briefcase reveals no money, but a stash of drugs), and the men learn that the job was arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite).They meet Kobayashi, who says he arranged for their arrests in New York and that his employer, mysterious Turkish crime lord Keyser Soze, from whom each of the men has unwittingly stolen (Keaton having stolen construction materials, McManus and Fenster later having done the same, Hockney having been responsible for the truck robbery that brought about the line-up, and Verbal having defrauded one of Soze's couriers out of $62,000), has ordered them to raid a ship holding Argentinian drug dealers (who are also Soze's rivals) and destroy $91 million worth of cocaine (which will effectively put them out of business and eliminate Soze's competition in the drugs business) being sold on board. The cash brought for the exchange will be their reward. Kobayashi says Soze will destroy their families if they refuse to comply with his order.During Kujan's interrogation (Verbal is politically connected and will be out on bail in 2 hours, and Kujan arranged to speak with Verbal for those 2 hrs. He wants to understand why there was no cocaine on the ship and to confirm that Keaton is dead), it is learned that there was no cocaine on the ship and Soze was seen on-board. Kujan says Verbal is withholding something as Keaton used to be a cop 15 years ago and was known to be corrupt. Kujan continues to press that once upon a time, when Keaton was a cop, he was about to be convicted for murder. But he faked his own death and the witnesses to his death, turned up dead later. The police convicted someone else, and Keaton turned up alive. Kujan is not convinced that Keaton died on the docks that night.Verbal then tells Kujan a legend about Soze: he was a small-time drug runner who murdered his own family when they were being held hostage by Hungarian mobsters, then massacred the mobsters and their families before disappearing, and from then on conducted business only indirectly through underlings who are mostly unfamiliar with their true employer. Soze thus became a fearsome urban myth, "a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night."Concluding his story, Verbal reveals Fenster was killed by Soze trying to flee, because he couldn't handle the thought of working for Soze. Keaton vows to finish Kobayashi as he believes there is no Soze, and that's just a myth. Keaton and the gang manage to kidnap Kobayashi and are about to kill him, when he mentions that he has Edie in his custody and proves it to Keaton. The gang realizes that Soze has all their families under surveillance and will them all, if his orders are not followed. The men attacked the ship during the night (Verbal was kept out of the attack, as he is anyways half crippled), killing several Argentinian and Hungarian gangsters before discovering that there was no cocaine. An unseen assailant killed Hockney, McManus, Keaton, and a prisoner in one of the ship's cabins. The mysterious figure then set fire to the ship as Verbal looked on from a hiding place on the dock.Kujan deduces that Keaton must be Soze, as one of the persons killed on the ship was Arturo Marquez, a smuggler who escaped prosecution (he was arrested in US for drug smuggling) by claiming he could identify Soze. Marquez was represented by lawyer Edie Finneran (Suzy Amis), Keaton's girlfriend, who was recently murdered. Kujan claims that the Argentinians took Marquez to sell him to Soze's Hungarian rivals (which is what the $91 MM payment was for. from the same Hungarians whom Soze brutally murdered a few years ago). Keaton then used the assault so that he could kill Marquez personally and fake his death. Verbal finally confesses that Keaton had been behind everything but refuses to testify in court. Verbal's bail is posted, and he is released.Moments later, Kujan realizes Verbal apparently fabricated his entire story by piecing together details from random items in Rabin's cluttered office. At the same time, Baer interrogates Kovash in his hospital bed, along with a police artist who is creating a sketch. Meanwhile, Verbal walks outside, gradually losing his limp and flexing his supposedly disabled hand. As Kujan pursues Verbal, a fax arrives at the police station with the artist's facial composite of Sze. The picture resembles Verbal, revealing that he was Soze all along. Verbal/Soze enters a car driven by "Kobayashi" and leaves moments before Kujan arrives on the scene.

Storyline

Following a truck hijack in New York, five criminals are arrested and brought together for questioning. As none of them are guilty, they plan a revenge operation against the police. The operation goes well, but then the influence of a legendary mastermind criminal called Keyser Söze is felt. It becomes clear that each one of them has wronged Söze at some point and must pay back now. The payback job leaves 27 men dead in a boat explosion, but the real question arises now: Who actually is Keyser Söze? — Soumitra After a number of people are killed and a cargo ship set on fire, Roger 'Verbal' Kint is questioned by U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan. Reluctant at first, Verbal begins to tell them what happened starting with when he met four men, all criminals, sharing a holding cell for a few hours. Together, they join forces to successfully hijack a jewel shipment and head to Los Angeles to lay low. There they are contacted by a lawyer, Kobayashi, representing the much-feared international criminal Keyser Söze who wants them to do a job for him. The result is the attack on the cargo ship. Verbal refuses to give evidence in the case and is set free. Only then does Kujan realize what's really happened. — garykmcd Police investigating an exploded boat on a San Pedro pier discover 27 bodies and $91 million worth of drug money. The only survivors are a severely burned and very scared Hungarian terrorist and Verbal Kint, a crippled con-man. Reluctantly, Kint is pressured into explaining exactly what happened on the boat. His story begins six weeks earlier with five criminals being dragged in by New York police desperate for suspects on a hijacked truck and ends with the possible identification of a criminal mastermind. — John Weeks <J.T.Weeks1@Student.derby.ac.uk> After a waterfront explosion, Verbal, an eye-witness and participant tells the story of events leading up to the conflagration. The story begins when five men are rounded up for a line-up, and grilled about a truck hijacking (the usual suspects). Least pleased is Keaton: a crooked cop - exposed, indicted, but now desperately trying to go straight. The cops won't leave him alone, however, and as they wait for their lawyers to post bail, he is talked into doing one more job with the other four. All goes tolerably well until the influence of the legendary, seemingly omnipotent "Keyser Söze" is felt. Although set in the modern day, it has much of the texture of the forties, plus suspense, intrigue (a fairly high body count), and lots of twists in the plot. — <Phil.Kilby@dit.csiro.au> 1 more All