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Suspect number one, please step forward and repeat the line you've been given.

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Verbal Kint

This dark and multilayered 1995 neo-noir film helped launch the careers of Kevin Spacey (who earned an Oscar for his performance), Benicio del Toro, director Bryan Singer, and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (who earned an Oscar for Best Screenplay), as well as relaunch that of Gabriel Byrne.

The movie is told mostly in flashback form. Roger "Verbal" Kint (Spacey) is the only survivor of a bombing and shootout that left 27 people dead. While his lawyer fights for his speedy release from police custody, Kint begrudgingly reveals the events leading up to the previous night's explosion to Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri). Meanwhile, in a hospital not far away, it is revealed that a Hungarian dealer survived the blast, though unfortunately he only speaks Hungarian and isn't in much shape to be divulging his story. Kujan is determined to get the truth, no matter what it takes — particularly the truth about Dean Keaton (Byrne), one of Kint's fellow "suspects" and the target of his longtime vendetta.

Eventually, the crux of Kint's story begins to center around the presence of a criminal mastermind named Keyser Söze. Kujan at first doubts the existence of the "bogeyman of the criminal underworld", but as Kint continues his story, Kujan eventually realizes just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.


This film provides examples of:

  • Absence of Evidence: The absence of any cocaine in the cargo ship is the first sign that the attack isn't what it first seems.
  • Actually, I Am Him: It turns out that Verbal Kint is Keyser Söze.
  • All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: The first glimpse we get of the infamous Keyser Söze is when he pisses on a Powder Trail to put it out before it can blow up a dock.
  • Ambiguously Evil: The Usual Suspects and Keyser Söze; the suspects are shown in a mostly sympathetic light, despite being murdering thieves and Keyser Söze is alluded and framed as a Satanic archetype. The end of this film challenges this perspective though since all of this is coming from Verbal's recantation of the movie's events, that's revealed to be mostly consisting of improvised lies created from what Verbal saw in the room. There's also the fact that Kujan views Keaton, the de-facto leader of the gang, as a murdering, scheming scumbag due to his past crimes, while in Verbal's words, he's a decent, if flawed, man who tried to escape from his past. Given that we cannot trust Verbal's words, given that he lied and quite possibly is Keyser Söze, we have no idea how bad the men really are.
  • Amoral Attorney:
    • "Kobayashi" is a lawyer on the payroll (and possibly The Dragon) to Diabolical Mastermind Keyser Söze.
    • Verbal mentions that a District Attorney in New York was part of the Dirty Cop ring the Suspects robbed and brought down.
  • Anyone Can Die: All but one of the Suspects die in the final shootout, and Fenster dies even before the third act.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: When Kujan asks Kint about Söze, Kint's entire demeanor changes, and he nearly collapses in terror. Based on the ending, this reaction wasn't quite genuine, but his initial cursing probably was, and his exaggerated terror was probably to conceal that.
  • Artistic License – Law: There is no "San Pedro Police Department". However, there is the Los Angeles Police Department's Harbor Division. (San Pedro was annexed into Los Angeles in 1909.)
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Invoked. Keyser Söze's attorney Kobayashi has a Japanese surname, but he's clearly of European descent, speaking with a vague Anglo-Indian accent, and having been described by the fence Redfoot as "some limey." As it turns out, this is an early hint that Kint is an Unreliable Narrator. "Kobayashi" was actually the brand name of the coffee mug that Kujan was drinking from, and he used it in his fake story because it sounded appropriately exotic and foreign.
  • Asshole Victim: The suspects' first job as a group involves robbing a pair of Dirty Cops. Then they call the police and the entire ring goes down.
  • Ass Shove: Fenster mentions he had a finger up his asshole.
    Hockney: Is it Friday already?
  • Avengers Assemble: It's done through the team's arrests. In lock-up, McManus suggests they get back together to do another job.
  • Badass Boast: McManus, while identifying and counting his targets before he opens fire to start the attack on the ship. Unfortunately, nobody was around him to hear it.
    McManus: [looking through his rifle scope and counting his targets] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...Ha! Oswald was a fag.
  • Badass Crew: Double subverted. The titular Usual Suspects pull off a total of one job while failing at the rest that they're assigned. However, it turns out they were set up to fail the hit on Saul Berg so that Kobayashi could blackmail them into carrying out what effectively amounted to a Suicide Mission — and it's implied that they would actually have pulled that mission off without any casualties among themselves, if not for their being double-crossed and killed by the last person they ever suspected.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Keyser Söze literally gets away with murder.
  • Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Inverted, as Verbal's quite helpful until you realize he's only telling the story to buy time until his release.
  • Beneath Suspicion: The major plot twist is all about this trope. Kujan is so focused on proving Dean Keaton is behind everything, he never once suspects that he might be getting lied to by Verbal Kint, the crippled con man, who's not actually crippled and is possibly Keyser Söze, the most ruthless crime boss in world history. None of the other criminals in the story suspect Kint of not being genuine, either, at least if that part of the story is to be believed.
  • Best Served Cold: Whereas most of the main characters are blackmailed by Kobayashi over transgressions they (unknowingly) committed against Keyser Söze in recent years, Keaton is blackmailed over actions he committed all the way back in 1981.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • Those who speak Hungarian get to hear a cut-off joke from Hockney finished by two Hungarian henchmen later in the film.
    • An ambiguous one: "Söz" in Turkish means a word or saying, but there's no such word as "söze" (aside from the dative form of "söz"). Unless it's supposed to be short for "sözebesi" (one who finds words easily, one who talks a lot) but that wouldn't make sense to speakers of Turkish either. There really seems to be a connection though. It comes together if you realize that Verbal says that he is often berated for talking too much which is yet another hint that Verbal is Söze.
    • The dying Hungarian's feverish and insane speech is untranslated. It's also not insane.
      "Why are you just standing there, you idiot? I'm not speaking English am I? Wouldn't it make sense to find someone who could talk to me so you could find the person that set me on fire, perhaps? He is the Devil. You've never seen anyone like Keyser Söze in all your miserable life, you idiot. Keyser Söze. Do you at least understand that? Keyser Söze. The Devil himself. Or are you American policemen so stupid that you haven't even heard of him? Keyser Söze, you ridiculous man. KEYSER SÖZE!"note 
    • Kobayashi's legal offices prominently display the words "Kobayashi" and "attorney", but unless you know Japanese you won't spot them.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The main characters are the Usual Suspects and Agent Kujan; the Suspects are hardcore criminals who've committed prolific robberies and committed several murders throughout the movie, while Kujan is a massive asshole who brings up Keaton's past in front of investors, when the latter is trying to move on with his life and commits verbal and physical abuse while interrogating Verbal. However, the suspects are shown in a sympathetic light (all of them care for each other to some extent and have loved ones that are threatened by Söze) and Kujan is just trying to nab a dangerous crime lord and solve a case. The Big Bad of the film is Keyser Söze's, a crime lord who had supposedly murdered his entire family, the Hungarian mob, and anyone barely associated with them to prove himself as The Unfettered, kills off all of the Usual Suspects (indirectly or directly), and manipulates several events to leave himself on top while several people end up dying.
  • Blasphemous Praise: There's this line from Verbal Kint, whether you consider it "praise" or not: "Keaton always said, 'I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.' Well, I do believe in God... and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze."
  • Break the Haughty: A glorious example in the form of Agent Kujan, who goes into Verbal's interrogation intent on hearing what he wants to hear, that Keaton was the mastermind of the whole movie and the mythical "Keyser Söze" everyone's so mystified by. Verbal tells him just that, and Kujan realizes too late that the entire movie, Verbal (who is self-admitted to be, by trade, A CON ARTIST) has just spent the entire movie feeding him an impromptu story he pulled completely out of his ass just to chew up the time until he's released, and that he has just let Verbal, the real Keyser Söze, walk out his front door and get away clean. All this after posturing condescendingly to Verbal how much smarter he is than him, and that Verbal is just a stupid, weak cripple who is nowhere near as dangerous as his fellow criminals (all of whom it is implied Verbal personally murdered to cover his tracks.) Ouch.
    From the final paragraph of the screenplay: A moment later, Agent David Kujan of U.S. Customs wanders into the frame, looking around much in the way a child would when lost at the circus.
  • Calling Card: Keyser Söze's is two Gangsta Style gunshots to the head. This is how he kills Keaton, Arturro, and Edie.
  • Cast as a Mask: Scott B. Morgan as the Keyser Söze in Kint's flashback. Morgan's elbows do not fully extend, causing his arms to be slightly crooked at all times. Singer thought it looked interesting.
  • Clueless Mystery: With the reveal that Verbal is really Keyser Söze and that he lied several times during his story, making up parts from things that he saw from objects within the room, the audience ends up knowing only a little more than what they did before watching the movie, and it may or may not be the truth.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Pretty much any time the Suspects have a scene together.
  • Collateral Angst: Edie. Her death is revealed as a Wham Line for Verbal, which so devastates him that he finally turns on Keaton. It's of course later revealed that he actually ordered her murder. She was the only main character killed who was not involved in any criminal activity, and her death serves no point beyond facilitating Verbal's Villainous Breakdown.
  • Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: A bunch of would-be robbers ends up stealing from and in the pockets of a much more sinister crime lord. The only reason they were kept alive is that they didn't realize who they were stealing from at the time of the robbery and they are forced to repay with another crime.
  • Composite Character: Originally, there were two San Pedro Policemen working with Kujan — Sergeant Rabin and Capt. Leo. However, the writer had to trim down the script, so he compressed the two characters into one, the Sergeant Rabin of the film. In the commentary, Singer and the writer thought this was for the best, as Leo was envisioned as a stereotypical angry police chief.
  • Confirmation Bias: Discussed In-Universe by Verbal Kint, who accuses Inspector Kujan of this at his interrogation. Later, the audience will discover that Verbal not only discussed it, but exploited it.
    Verbal: To a cop the explanation is never that complicated. It's always simple. There's no mystery to the street, no arch criminal behind it all. If you got a dead body and you think his brother did it, you're gonna find out you're right.
  • Creator Cameo:
    • Screenwriter Chris McQuarrie plays one of the cops conducting the lineup.
    • Either Singer or McQuarrie ad-libs the "In English, please!" remark to Fenster when Benicio del Toro mumbles his line. Sources differ on who the line actually belongs to. Some attribute it to McQuarrie, since he is playing one of the police officers, while others claim it is Singer shouting a directorial instruction that he decided to throw in.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: The climactic shootout has Keaton, McManus, and Hockney tearing through the thugs at the pier like crazy. Then Keyser Söze curb-stomps them right back.
  • Cut Lex Luthor a Check: In Kint's story, Keaton returns to crime because he couldn't get a legitimate occupation. However, staying out of crime has earned him a beautiful hot-shot attorney for a girlfriend. As long as he's with her, he won't need a profitable career. It's really his vanity that drives him back to crime.
  • Dead Man's Switch: Kobayashi lets the protagonists know that if he dies under suspicious circumstances, his boss Keyser Söze will immediately know who did it and take revenge on them and their families.
  • Death by Recognition: Keyser Söze finds the man who can identify him, who begs him, "I promise...I told them nothing..." Söze is bathed in golden light, and then there's a Discretion Shot as Söze shoots him.
  • Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: At least enough for the real Keyser Söze to get away.
  • Dirty Cop:
    • Kujan's backstory is that he was a sheriff turned crook.
    • New York's Finest Taxi Service, a ring of corrupt cops who drive drug dealers and other criminals from the airport to wherever they're doing their business. The suspects rob them on their first job together and call both the cops and the press on them, bringing the rings down for good.
  • Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Kujan asks Verbal why he didn't try to save Keaton.
    Verbal: It was Keyser Söze; it was the Devil himself. How do you shoot the Devil in the back? (Verbal lifts his palsied hand) What if you miss?
  • Door Handle Scare: The scared target on the boat watches how the lever on his cabin door moves and the door opens to reveal a dead guard dropping down followed by the shadow of Söze.
  • Dramatic Drop: Agent Kujan drops his coffee cup when he realizes that he let Keyser Söze walk out the door after having him in the police station for several hours spinning his yarn.
  • Dramatic Shattering: Done with a dropped coffee cup at the end, shown under three different angles.
  • Dressing as the Enemy: Hockney twice fools the Hungarian mooks, taking advantage of the fact that they don't know all the Argentinians; the first time by casually waving his submachine gun, the second time by shouting in Spanish.
  • Driving Question: Who or what is Keyser Söze?
  • Due to the Dead: McManus is determined to dig a hole with his hands to bury the body of his long-time friend Fenster.
  • Elevator Action Sequence: Deliberately downplayed. Kobayashi is riding the elevator with his two bodyguards. The lights go out, and the elevator is lit by twin flashes, then enters a windowed section of the shaft which reveal no bodyguards and two blood-splatters on the glass behind Kobayashi, who looks up to see McManus pointing a silenced pistol, telling him to push the button for the roof.
  • The Ending Changes Everything: Popularized by this film, which is the former Trope Namer. A police prisoner, Verbal Kint, is being interrogated about a ship explosion the previous night. His interrogator Agent Kujan believes that the explosion was caused by Dean Keaton, a crooked cop, but Kint tells how a diabolical mastermind called Keyser Söze was behind it all. Eventually, Kint relents under Kujan's pressure and admits that Keaton was Keyser Söze all along. Just after Kint is released from custody, however, Kujan realizes that Kint has been spinning a gigantic lie using objects around the office as inspiration. It's suggested that it was Kint himself who is Keyser Söze and was simply playing a role the whole time. This is all foreshadowed in the beginning, when Kujan states that cops almost always find what they expect to find. Kujan expected Kint to be a weak patsy protecting Keaton, so that's the role Kint played.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
    • Kobayashi blackmails the Suspects by revealing that he knows the names and locations of the people they love the most.
    • Defied in Keyser Söze's case. Some Hungarian criminals were counting on this trope when they took Keyser Söze's wife and children hostage, but Söze responded to this by killing his family himself, in order to prove to his enemies that there was no limit to his ruthlessness.
  • Everyone Is a Suspect: Who is Keyser Söze?
  • Fake-Out Twist: Verbal Kint's movie-long monologue finally finishes up by revealing the identity of Keyser Söze: Dean Keaton, who died in the opening scene of the movie. As Kint leaves the police station, the detective figures out the actual identity of Keyser Söze: Verbal Kint.
  • Faking the Dead: Keaton is infamous within the New York underworld for having faked his death to dodge a murder rap. When the cops confront him with this, Keaton claims he did no such thing. He is living in the same city, using the same name and the same face, it has nothing to do with him that the cops messed up and thought he was dead. Towards the end of the story, Kujan believes that Keaton has done this a second time, and Keyser is either him or a smokescreen.
  • Feet-First Introduction: Used to hide the identity of Keyser Söze. This is cleverly used as Book Ends for The Reveal, as Verbal Kint's limp changes mid-step to a confident stride as he walks away from the police station.
  • First-Person Peripheral Narrator: The story that Verbal Kint tells has Dean Keaton as the main character, who Agent Kujan is convinced was behind a recent harbor shootout.
  • Flashback-Montage Realization: When Kujan reveals to Verbal Kint that Keaton was Keyser Söze, it flashes back to various moments of the group and of Kint's interactions with Keaton, among others. Happens a second time when it's revealed Kint fabricated the story and that he himself is Söze, which Kujan realizes as he looks at the papers on his wall and flashes back to all the things in the story that Kint/Söze based on them.
  • Flaw Exploitation: Verbal plays on Kujan's high opinion of his deduction skills to make him believe Keaton was the mastermind instead of him.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • There's an early scene of Verbal Kint alone in Rabin's office looking around at his surroundings. This sets up that he was just pulling details from Rabin's clutter for his story.
    • Verbal shooting Saul Berg while Keaton was pleading with him in an effort to minimize the killing.
    • And Rabin himself gives Kujan this gem just before The Reveal:
      Jeff Rabin: ... but it all has a system, Dave. It all makes sense when you look at it right. You gotta, like stand back from it, you know?
    • When Keaton demands Kobayashi tell him who he works for during their first meeting, if you look closely, Kobayashi's eyes briefly shift towards Verbal, before he looks back at Keaton and says, "I work for Keyser Söze".
      • Also, all of the gang is on the far side of the pool table from Kobayashi. Except for Verbal, who's on the side of the table. Right between both sides, metaphorically and literally. He's also the only one in position to actually start play, and there's a brief wide shot after Verbal's "Who's Keyser Söze?" when you see Keaton has put the cue down on the table pointing directly at Verbal. And that Verbal is visually closer to Kobayashi than the rest of the gang.
      • Kobayashi and Verbal are the only ones in the room wearing white shirts. Everyone else is wearing grey, black, or blue.
    • Look at Verbal's relative position on the night of the attack. He is hiding behind a stack of material on the dock. When Hockney is killed, Verbal would have been the closest person to him. In his testimony, shown in flashback, Verbal supposedly takes cover behind some large spools of rope on the dock as he observes Söze on the boat. However, when the camera zooms in on this area from the opposite side after the explosion, no one is seen peering through the ropes.
    • In the opening scene, Keyser Söze looks at a gold pocket watch and produces a gold cigarette lighter. Later, in the scene where the gang threatens Kobayashi, we see Verbal wearing a similar watch. He also collects this watch, along with a gold cigarette lighter, as he leaves the police station, despite having earlier demonstrated his inability to use a similar lighter during his questioning.
    • When Kujan begins to suggest that Keaton might be the one behind the hit on the docks, Verbal can be seen starting to smile. When Kujan comes around from behind Verbal and looks him in the face, the smile disappears, and Verbal continues to pretend loyalty to Keaton. During the interrogation throughout the movie, although it is easy to miss upon first viewing, Verbal is seen glancing for a second or two away from Kujan or over Kujan's shoulder at the wall behind him in full view of wanted posters and advertisement flyers of names as Verbal is picking up the names of the mysterious associates and contacts such as 'Redfoot' and 'Kobayashi' when Kujan's questioning becomes more intense.
    • Keyser Söze is described by Verbal as being of mixed Turkish/German heritage. "Söze" is Turkish for "talks too much," or "verbal." "Keyser" sounds like the German word "Kaiser," meaning "emperor," while "Kint" sounds like "king." Director Bryan Singer has referred to the name as essentially meaning "The king that talks too much."
    • If you're good with voices, you'll recognize that's Kevin Spacey's voice that whispers "How ya doin' Keaton?" at the start of the film. After being thrown on the ground Verbal slips "I did kill Keaton," though Kujan is shouting too loud to hear, and Verbal is able to correct himself by saying "I did see Keaton get shot." And when they are listening to the men before the attack on the boat, Keaton speculates that they are speaking Russian, but Verbal correctly identifies the language as Hungarian, something Söze would obviously know.
    • During his interrogation by the NYPD, Hockney tells one of the officers "I'm gonna have your fucking badge, cocksucker." The phrasing recalls the phrase that the NYPD had the suspects say during their lineup, and foreshadows that Hockney was responsible for hijacking the truck full of guns.
    • "And like that (poof), he's gone."
  • Freudian Threat: When the main characters try to threaten Kobayashi over his connections to Keyser Söze, he calmly describes the gruesome deaths in store for them and their loved ones if they don't back off. He offers "merely" to castrate McManus' nephew as a small mercy.
  • Gangsta Style: Söze finishes off Keaton while holding a pistol to one side. This is also how Hockney holds his gun in a scene, which is a Red Herring.
  • The Ghost:
    • Kujan strong-arms Verbal into talking by threatening to turn an infamous criminal named Ruby Deamer on him. Deamer never appears on screen.
    • Originally the script had a second local cop working with Kujan, Captain Leo. The role was eliminated and Captain Leo is never seen, but a few offhand mentions to Captain Leo are still made in conversations between Agent Kujan and Sergeant Rabin.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Several, mostly done quite artfully.
  • Guns Akimbo:
    • During the jewel heist, McManus aims two pistols and gets kill shots on two different targets who are both grappling with his accomplices. Notably, he hesitates for several seconds trying to line up both shots and the others look at him incredulously after he pulls it off.
    • Keaton uses two pistols during the climax.
  • Gut Feeling: Kujan believes he already knows what happens and tries to get Verbal to confirm his suspicions. Early in the film, Verbal encourages this behavior, more or less saying that arch-criminal diabolical masterminds don't exist in the real world, and if a cop has a murder victim and thinks the victim's brother did it, he's usually going to be right. It's a subtle way for Verbal to get Kujan to shrug off everything he's hearing about Söze and remain blindly fixated on Keaton, which ultimately allows Verbal to slip right out of Kujan's hands. Kujan realizes how wrong he was to be so fixated just a few minutes too late.
  • Hand of Death: Söze's identity is hidden by showing various parts of his body — his hands, the back of his head — but never his face, except in a single dark and blurry shot of him walking away from a burning building. Söze was played in flashbacks by about six different people, including three members of the main cast (Baldwin, Byrne and Spacey). One of the other people was Bryan Singer himself. When people ask him who Keyser Söze really is, he always answers, "Me."
  • He Knows Too Much: The one surviving Hungarian from that boat clearly fears being the victim of this trope. Considering that Söze put together the attack on the boat just to kill another man who knew too much, it's a valid concern.
    Translator: He says it was the devil. He saw the devil...
  • Hollywood Law: Obviously, there's no way a lineup like this could happen in real life. It is lampshaded by several of the characters, especially Keaton (himself an ex-cop) who points out that it violates protocol in multiple ways.
  • Hollywood Silencer: McManus uses one attached to his Browning Hi-Power pistol when he guns down Kobayashi's guards in the elevator. In real life, using even a suppressed firearm in such a tiny, enclosed space would be very loud.
  • Homoerotic Subtext: McManus has a number of homoerotic moments in the film.
    • McManus and Hockney get right in each other's faces during their argument over whether they should go to Los Angeles, to the point that they're almost kissing. Hockney asks, "Wanna dance?" which ultimately prompts Verbal to say "Ladies...?" to deescalate the situation.
    • McManus' extreme emotional reaction after Fenster's death suggests that they may have been partners in something more than crime.
    • McManus whispers into Kobayashi's ear and licks his lips before preparing to kill him.
  • Horrifying the Horror: The Hungarians are utterly ruthless gangsters who rule purely through intimidation. When Agent Baer recognises Arkosh Kovash in the hospital, he insists the hospital staff immediately put guards on the door despite Kovash's severe injuries and burns. Kovash however is too busy trying to get police protection from 'the Devil' to cause any trouble.
  • How We Got Here: The plot of the movie is largely Verbal Kint recounting to a skeptical Agent Kujan how he ended up in police custody after getting caught up in a criminal conspiracy Kujan was investigating.
  • I Can Explain: Subverted. Verbal's attempts to evade giving information to the police turn out to be an elaborate strategy to get the police to believe him when he actually does provide (wrong) information.
  • I Can't Feel My Legs!: The following scene occurs at the beginning of the movie. Later, we hear that Keaton was shot beforehand.
    Keyser Söze: How you doing Keaton?
    Keaton: I can't feel my legs... Keyser.
  • If I Dont Return: Keaton leaves a message for Edie with Verbal right before engaging in the Suicide Mission.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: McManus pulls off a few impressive shots, most notably the one during the jewel heist when he kills two henchmen struggling with Hockney and Fenster without killing his partners.
  • Indy Ploy: The whole movie is a story Kint pulls out of his ass when he's stuck in police custody.
  • Informed Attribute:
    • Verbal tells everyone that McManus is "crazy." While McManus is shown to be the most aggressive and pugnacious member of the team, he's never really crazy.
    • Verbal describes Fenster as a "tight-ass," which doesn't seem to accurately describe anything Fenster says or does in the film. It's likely a holdover from Fenster's original characterization before Benecio Del Toro made changes.
    • Kujan states Keaton is a "cold-blooded bastard", but in Verbal's story he's reluctant to get back into crime and to kill anyone. This is explained as Verbal editing his story to make Keaton come off better, but that is itself subverted by the final reveal that the whole story was a fabrication, so all we're left with are the data points Kujan provides, which do paint the picture of a cold-blooded bastard.
  • In Medias Res: The film opens with Keaton on the deck of the ship about to blow it up. He's stopped. Soon, the police drag in Verbal to tell them How We Got Here.
  • Insert Cameo: Bryan Singer's hands as the silhouetted Keyser Söze. Which makes him one of about a half-dozen different people, including two of the lead actors, to portray Keyser in that film.
  • Interrogation Flashback: The entire movie is Verbal (and the surviving Hungarian mobster) being interrogated and Verbal's flashback to the events of the preceding weeks. Well, not exactly …
  • Interrogation Montage: The interrogations of the team before the famous "line-up scene", where they successively blow off the cops.
  • Ironic Nursery Rhyme: McManus sings a special version of "Old MacDonald" right before killing several people.
    Old MacDonald had a farm
    E-I-E-I-O
    And on that farm he... shot some guys
    Badda bing, badda bing bang boom
    [cue bomb going off]
  • Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?:
    Agent Kujan: You know a dealer named Ruby Deamer?
    Verbal Kint: You know a religious guy named John Paul?
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Towards the end of the interrogation, Rabid Cop Kujan pushes Verbal to the ground and shouts at him in order to get him to confess about the identity of Söze.
  • Kansas City Shuffle: Late in the film, Kujan becomes convinced that Verbal's story is one big smokescreen concocted to shield the true perpetrator of the crime from the blame. He's right, of course. Where he goes wrong is in assuming that the perp is Keaton, which Verbal goes with to shift the blame even further from himself.
  • Kill the Ones You Love: According to a legend, when Keyser Söze was a small-time gangster, someone once tried to take him down by going after his wife and children. He came home to find them being held hostage, guns and knives being held to them, pleading eyes, etc. Not to be cowed, he killed them all himself, then the shocked hostage-takers, "then their parents, then their parents' friends..."
  • Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: According to Verbal Kint, this was the event that solidified Keyser Söze as The Dreaded years ago. Söze, merely a petty drug dealer at the time, came home one night to find his family being held hostage by Hungarian gangsters, who had already raped his wife and killed one of his sons. His solution is to kill his family, followed by all but one of the mobsters, whom he allowed to escape in order to spread the story.
  • Kubrick Stare: Verbal gives one to the (offscreen) interrogators when he reads his line in the lineup.
  • Large Ham: Seen during the Police Lineup, where various characters act up to annoy the police or look more badass, most notably McManus.
  • Laughably Evil: Not exactly evil, but the title characters have an empathic moment where they spontaneously burst out laughing in a police line-up— in fact, Bryan Singer lampshades this in an interview by saying that there's a certain humanity in a bunch of guys getting along and laughing together, even if they're horrible criminals. (The reality is that the actors themselves just couldn't get through the scene without breaking character and cracking up.)
  • Line-of-Sight Alias: Many details from Verbal's story turn out to be taken from objects in the room. Verbal is seen looking around the room before his interrogation, and a later shot even shows him looking up at the bottom of Kujan's coffee cup.
  • Literary Allusion Title: The title comes from the famous line "Round up the usual suspects" from Casablanca.
  • Lost in Translation: In-film example. The Hungarian translator the cops get, who speaks it with a strong American accent and thus isn't a native, mishears one word he translates as "package" instead of "guy" because it's native Hungarian slang. The sentence thus reads "We picked up a package" instead of "We picked up a guy".
  • Make an Example of Them: Fenster gets killed by Söze's men in order to show the rest of the group what would happen to them if they stepped out of line.
  • The Man Behind the Man: The Suspects can't decide whether Kobayashi works for Keyser Söze or whether he is the true Big Bad. Only when Keaton comes face-to-face with Keyser is he convinced.
  • Masquerading As the Unseen: Keyser Söze is never seen during Verbal's account, and he interacts with the characters through an intermediary. This may become an inversion though, when it's revealed that Verbal is Söze.
  • Meaningful Echo: At the end of the movie, during the reveal that Verbal lied about everything, lines from earlier begin to be overlaid. At first it just matches the lies to the facts, but as the tension ramps up, more lines are thrown in, recontextualized with more menace, as it implies every threat or warning by Verbal is actually a boast about his true identity as Keyser Söze. The last line of the movie — "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist ... And like that, he's gone" — combines two lines to confirm that Keyser Söze is truly evil, and has escaped once more.
  • Mexican Standoff: One occurs between Verbal, Hockney and Fenster on one side and Redfoot's men on the other.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Invoked when the Suspects rob a pair of cops then make an anonymous tip to a reporter, revealing that the cops were dirty and leading to not just the entire Dirty Cop ring going down, but unearthing a chain of corruption that extended at least as far as the D.A.
  • Missed Him by That Much: Söze's plan almost falls apart when the fax with the mugshot drawing comes in only minutes after he left the precinct.
  • The Mob Boss Is Scarier: This seems to be the case when Kujan brings up Keyser Söze and Verbal reacts with stark terror. Subverted at the end when it's revealed that Verbal is Keyser Söze.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Some early trailers for the film implied that the main characters, in a combination of self-preservation and horror at Keyser Söze's activities, were banding together to take him down.
  • No One Sees the Boss: Ever since his rampage against the Hungarians, Söze has been underground and working from the shadows. Both the criminals and the cops note that nobody ever seems to have worked directly with Söze, but instead always at some distance or remove, such as not knowing (at the time at least) that they were hired to work for Söze through proxies and such.
  • Oh, Crap!: Kujan gets an epic one when he spots that the corkboard in Rabin's office was made in Skokie, Illinois, where one of Kint's anecdotes took place, making him realize that Kint was making stuff up in order to buy time.
  • Once More, with Clarity: The final minutes of the film replay voice-overs from Kint's story and conversation with Kujan, while events onscreen make the actual meaning more clear and show how Kint was subtly mocking Kujan the entire time.
  • One Last Job: Dean Keaton claims robbing the New York Taxi Service was this. No one believes him; and Verbal says it only took a day of badgering from McManus to convince him to take on another job.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
    • Gabriel Byrne's native Irish accent shows through so often that you might conclude that Keaton is supposed to have an Irish background. The scene with the five in holding after the lineup is a good display of this:
      Keaton: Yer makin' me toired all ouver.
    • Pete Postlethwaite's accent changes from scene to scene: sometimes English, sometimes Irish, sometimes South Asian. Perhaps a sign of how unreliable Kint's narrative is.
  • Orphaned Punchline: To distract Saul and his bodyguards before attacking them, Hockney is telling a story — the line we hear is "so I open the car door, and this chick is totally naked..." Apparently, later in the movie one of the guards on the boat gives the setup to this line in Hungarian.
  • Personal Effects Reveal: The gold watch and lighter featured in the opening as belonging to Söze are given back to Verbal Kint when he leaves the police station.
  • Police Lineup: How the suspects all meet each other. It's the picture used on the posters and DVD cover.
  • Posthumous Character: Most of the characters.
  • Precision F-Strike: Verbal's reaction to a sudden new line of questioning is classic:
    Kujan: (bursts into office) Who's Keyser Söze?
    Verbal: Aw, fuck!
    • Later, as he is walking out of the office:
      Verbal: Fucking cops!
  • Pretty Little Headshots: At the Parking Garage, Verbal shoots the mobster with the suitcase in the forehead which leaves only a tiny entrance wound.
  • Product Placement: A minor, but significant one, with the real-life bulletin board brand Quartet (from Skokie, IL) that allows Kujan to finally Spot the Thread on Verbal's story, albeit just a little too late.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Keaton engages in this, after the assault on the boat reveals there's no cocaine stash:
    Keaton: There is no! Fucking! COKE!
  • Quizzical Tilt: Verbal has his head constantly tilted during the New York's Finest Taxi Service robbery.
  • Real After All: At the end, Kujan realizes that Verbal has lied throughout the confession and that the dying Hungarian had given a description of Keyser Söze, that matches Verbal's appearance, putting the whole events of what happened into question. However, Verbal/Söze is picked up by none other than the man representing Söze, "Kobayashi", meaning that some parts of the story are true, but we don't know all the parts that aren't.
  • Real Stitches for Fake Snitches: Kujan threatens Verbal with this to get him to flip.
  • Repeat Cut: The landing of the coffee mug in the pivotal Dramatic Drop / Dramatic Shattering scene is shown three times.
  • Reusable Lighter Toss: A zippo is dropped on a police car covered in flammable fluid.
  • Rewatch Bonus: The film completely changes upon a second viewing due to the nature of the twist.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the backstory, semi-mythical criminal mastermind Keyser Söze is faced with other gangsters who try to take over his business by threatening to kill his family. Instead, he kills his family himself, and all but one of the thugs.
    Verbal: (Narrating) He lets the last Hungarian go. He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money. And like that (poof), he was gone.
  • Robbing the Mob Bank: Each of the suspects has unwittingly stolen from one of Söze's fronts or minions.
  • Rule of Three: The Suspects run three jobs as a crew, all with greater and greater consequences. First they rob New York's Finest Taxi Service and get away clean (and siccing the cops and the press on them to boot). Then they try to rob a jewel smugger (really drug smuggler) where the smuggler and his bodyguards are killed, meaning someone has blackmail fodder on them. Finally, the Suspects raid the boat where they kill dozens of people and all but one are killed by Keyser Söze.
  • Sawed-Off Shotgun: Hockney wields a double-barreled version when the suspects rob the Dirty Cops.
  • Scheherezade Gambit: Verbal uses his tale-spinning talent to outwit his captors and not only to gain time: He continually changes his story until he finds the correct one to convince Kujan of his In-Universe Confirmation Bias so he would release Verbal.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Söze is able to manipulate police departments to a truly disturbing extent. Despite admitting (as Verbal Kint) to a raft of crimes, the most the police can hit him with is a minor weapons charge. Rabin says he's "protected from up on high by the prince of darkness." Later on, Kint's story includes Kobayashi saying that Söze arranged the line up to gather up the five crooks whose crimes had interfered with Söze and get them to repay their "debt".
  • Seamless Spontaneous Lie: The entire movie is one long example.
  • Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: It's eventually revealed that the legendary crime lord Keyser Söze has been watching the five main characters for some time prior to the start of the film, as all of them have unknowingly stolen from his businesses or underlings. As Kobayashi reveals, he's been gathering intelligence on all of them during that time, waiting patiently until either an opportunity for revenge presented itself, or he could force them into doing a task (in their case a Suicide Mission) in exchange for releasing them from their debts.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: The end reveals that Verbal Kint's story, which comprises the bulk of the film, is a fabrication. The audience is never shown, what, if anything, from Verbal's story is true and is left to decide for themselves what they believe.
  • Shame If Something Happened: This is how Kobayashi keeps the protagonists working for Söze. When the Suspects try to get Kobayashi to call off the cargo ship job at gunpoint, he calmly leads them to his office where Keaton's lover Edie Finneran is in a meeting. Kobayashi points to her 'bodyguard', noting that he never leaves her side while she's in town. Shortly afterwards he notes that if Keaton doesn't go through with the job assigned to him, Edie will suffer "a most gruesome violation" before she dies, pretty strongly implying the bodyguard will be responsible for her death and "violation." He also names a close family member of each member of the team, their location, and what he'll do to them if they don't follow their orders.
  • Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: Referenced when the cops show up at Hockney's garage to arrest him. He casually reaches under the car, and the cops draw on him, expecting a weapon, but he pulls out a rag to wipe his face off, utterly apathetic to how close he came to getting shot.
  • Shoot the Hostage: Keyser Söze comes home to find the Hungarians have captured and raped his wife and are threatening to kill her and all his children if he doesn't give them his drug business. So his options are give in or they kill his family. He takes a third option: he pulls out a gun, kills all but one of the Hungarians, then kills all of his family. He lets the last Hungarian go so he can tell the others that Keyser Söze is coming for them.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: Hockney and Fenster wield shotguns when the suspects rob the pair of Dirty Cops.
  • Shout-Out: The scene near the end where we see Verbal's "crippled" foot gradually untwist itself and walk normally as he passes by a succession of tree shadows is a visual reference to "The Howling Man" episode of The Twilight Zone (1959) where we see the released prisoner's human face gradually take on satanic features as he walks under a succession of column shadows.
  • A Sinister Clue: Keyser Söze is left-handed. A clue to his identity occurs early in the movie, when Verbal Kint tries to light a cigarette by holding the lighter in his right hand and opening it with his cerebral palsy-afflicted left hand, but can't do it.
  • Sound-Only Death: The target on the boat gets killed by Söze but we only hear the gunfire from outside his cabin.
  • Spare a Messenger: One anecdote about Keyser Söze is that, when his wife and children were held hostage, he killed them, and spared one of the kidnappers to spread the word.
  • Spy Speak: McManus communicates to the team from his lookout on the roof with lines like "Elvis has left the building."
  • Stocking Mask: The crew wear variations of these during the taxi heist except for Mc Manus who wears a ski-mask.
  • Suicide Mission: The crew knows that the harbor mission is suicide. They comply nonetheless because of the pressure Söze puts on.
  • The Summation: Subverted as part of the infamous plot twist. Kujan thinks he has it all figured out, that Keaton was Keyser Söze and explains this to Verbal Kint, complete with revelatory montage. The explanation seems to hold water and Verbal is allowed to go. Seconds later, Kujan realizes that Verbal's story, from which Kujan created his explanation, was completely fabricated—Verbal himself is Söze.
  • Suspect Existence Failure: Agent Kujan tells a story about Dean Keaton subverting this. Some time in the past, when Keaton was being investigated for a murder, Keaton suddenly died. Then, in the course of a year or so, the two witnesses to Keaton's death died under suspicious circumstances as well, and someone else got convicted of the murder Keaton was accused of. Sure enough, soon afterwards Dean Keaton turns up alive and well. Kujan presents this as an example of why he considers Keaton so evil and refuses to believe Keaton is dead.
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: Keaton claims that he is really in love with his lawyer girlfriend and was trying to set himself up as a legitimate restauranteur. However, when the police bring him in for the line-up right at the beginning of the movie, arresting him at dinner with his potential investors, he realizes that his investors are going to back out of doing business with an ex-con, and he will never be able to set up a legal business. So, since the police will never let him put his past behind him, he might as well embrace it.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Drug dealers rape Keyser Söze's wife, cut his son's throat in front of his eyes, then threaten to kill the rest of his family unless he hands over his turf. He responds by killing two of the drug dealers, then the rest of his family, then hunting down the drug dealers' families and everyone they've ever known or done business with, while the narrator explains that Söze's real strength is his willingness to do what the other guy wouldn't.
  • Tuckerization: The real Dave Kujan was a co-worker of screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie's at a law firm.
  • Twist Ending: Just when Kujan thinks he's got it all figured out, he looks at the pinboard papers and realizes that Kint's story is a massive ball of lies.
  • Two Aliases, One Character: Verbal Kint/Keyser Söze.
  • Undercover When Alone: A very subtle version of this: When Verbal is alone (in flashbacks) his manner of holding a cigarette to his lips varies from one culture's to another — the German manner, the Russian, the Turkish. But in the company of the others, it's always American.
  • Unreliable Voiceover: The film primarily uses Unreliable Narrator, but the flashbacks are likely slightly closer to reality than the parts that are only narrated. For example:
    • Verbal's story involves a man named "Kobayashi", which is a Japanese surname, but the flashbacks show an obviously non-Japanese man in that role, and we know from the ending that someone who looks like that really is associated with Keyser Söze.
    • Another possible case is when Verbal also describes McManus as being enraged when his longtime partner Fenster tries to run away from the job. When the flashback shows the Suspects finding Fenster's body, McManus is visibly griefstricken over Fenster's death, insisting on trying to bury Fenster, and declaring It's Personal with Kobayashi now. Either McManus calmed from an initial reaction or Verbal made up the part where McManus was furious.
  • The Un-Reveal: A very rare case of inversion: it seems for a long time like neither the audience or the Suspects will learn identity of whoever robbed the truck that resulted in them being pulled in for the lineup. When it is finally revealed to have been Hockney, neither the audience nor the movie's characters care very much, as there are much more important issues demanding their attention.
  • Vapor Trail: In the opening scene, a dying Keaton lights a trail of fuel leading to some tanks stacked on the deck of the ship, only for the fire to be casually urinated on by the as-yet unrevealed Big Bad. He shoots Keaton after some brief dialogue, then casually drops a lit cigarette into the fuel to set it and the ship itself alight.
  • Villainous Breakdown:
  • Wham Line:
    • When the lawyer introduces himself, the men all fall silent when he tells them the following:
      Kobayashi: I work for Keyser Söze.
    • Near the end of Agent Kujan's interrogation, he rattles off his theory that Dean Keaton orchestrated the entire scheme because he was Keyser Söze all along. The final line that hits Verbal Kint in the face is when Kujan tells him that Keaton's girlfriend Edie Finnerman has been found shot to death.
    • A subtle one just before The Reveal. When Verbal is released, he goes to get his effects, which, according to the cop listing them off, are, "One watch, gold. One cigarette lighter, gold." Not only was Keyser Söze shown with these exact items in flashbacks, Verbal's fumbling with Kujan's lighter earlier raises the question: why does he even have a cigarette lighter in the first place?
  • Wham Shot: "Quartet, Skokie, IL." The brand of the whiteboard in Rabin's office, which coincidentally matches up with Verbal's anecdote about being in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, IL. And far too late, Agent Kujan, and the audience, find out they've been played.
    • "Because you're stupid, Verbal! Because you're a cripple!" "Verbal Kint" sheds his limp and starts walking perfectly normally down the street.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Redfoot the fence? Well, the original script contained a scene showing his bullet-ridden corpse embedded in a car windshield. It's a Justified Trope in the end, as "Redfoot" probably doesn't even exist.
  • You All Meet in a Cell: The main characters first meet in a jail cell, and this is revealed to be part of Keyser Söze's plot. The main characters lampshade this as being improbable since when you're in a lineup it's almost always you and four volunteers the police hired to fill out the lineup.
  • Your Mom: Gender-inverted. Hockney's reply to the investigator's question as to what will happen to him if they put him back in jail:
    "Fuck your father in the shower and then have a snack."
  • Zipping Up the Bodybag: A scene at the harbor where policemen are covering the lined-up bodies with sheets.

And like that... he's gone.

 
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Usual Suspects

The film, "The Usual Suspects" introduces its character through an interrogation montage narrated by one of the characters.

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