Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey When it was released in 1995, The Usual Suspects was hailed as original, inventive, and, most of all, unpredictable. Having now seen this movie well over a dozen times, I can say that its impact is just as powerful today as it was the first time I saw it. In what I consider to be the best movie-making year of all-time, The Usual Suspects nonetheless distinguishes itself from everything else, offering a fresh take on the mystery and suspense genre. As The Usual Suspects opens, we find "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey, in an Oscar-winning role) the object of a police interrogation. He is one of only two known survivors of an explosive evening on a docked cargo ship, and the police want answers. Verbal was one of an elite group of known criminals involved in a police lineup in New York five weeks prior, and the rest are presumed to be dead from the previous night's explosion. From this opening interrogation, soon conducted solely by Special Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri), we are shown pieces of the puzzle that lead to the events on the cargo ship. Five convicted felons - Spencer McManus (Stephen Baldwin, The Young Riders), Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Fred Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak, A Few Good Men *cc/fewgoodmen.html*), and Verbal Kint - are brought in to answer for charges of gun-theft, a crime for which all five profess their innocence. Crowded together in their cell, however, McManus is able to convince most of the others that these charges are not just an inconvenience, but an opportunity. Their combined talents would be perfectly suited to a job he has in mind, if he can convince the now-straight Keaton to return to his old ways. Keaton has attempted to set himself up as a respectable businessman, yet his past continues to haunt him, to the point where the authorities will not allow him to lead a normal life. Convinced of this, Keaton reluctantly climbs aboard, and t...
