Cheap The Usual Suspects (Special Edition) (DVD) (Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri) (Bryan Singer) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Usual Suspects (Special Edition)

Great Cast, Great Script..What's Usual About That?
The Usual Suspects is a real treat for movie lovers who enjoy film noir and caper movies. The Oscar-winning screenplay and the excellent cast makes every scene rich with texture. I put my DVD player on "shuffle play" and let the scenes come up in any order - you'll see what I mean. One of my main measures for buying a DVD is how often I watch it, and you have to watch this a number of times just to appreciate all that goes on. It also takes a few passes to figure out what the heck Benicio del Toro's character is even saying in the semi-intelligible voice he has chosen. It's throwaway humor, but you've go to dig to find it. I loved it.

It's an exciting thiller and it's so FUNNY without breaking the mood. Many of the jokes are only understood in retrospect, though, making repeat viewing mandatory. Kevin Spacey is always aces, but he earns his Oscar as he introduces us to the story of Keyser Soze - a new name that everyone will know. Second best movie of the 90's - right behind LA Confidential.

Okay - that was the old review - I've since bought the special edition, and I highly recommend it. Deleted scenes and the blooper reel are so-so, but the discussions with the actors are fascinating, as is the trip to the Cannes film festival. Best bits were the discussions of the infamous lineup and the other actors' comments about Benicio's intentionally unintelligible dialogue.

P.S. - I just recently caught the movie on network TV, where they overdubbed "Give me the keys, you fairy godmother." And some people will wonder what all the buzz was about.

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Too clever for its own good.
Confusion remains the common denominator in "The Usual Suspects," in which director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie are determined to create a fresh and inviting thriller, but come up empty. The star-studded cast is a delight to watch, but the film is so fixated on its own cleverness and originality that it quickly loses interest, deadening the impact of a surprise twist ending that may have worked had it had a better lead-up. Perhaps what makes the film so cumbersome is its shift from past to present, and vice-versa. Beginning with an explosion aboard a ship on which a shootout has just occurred, the movie then shifts back six weeks to the arrest of five men, all accused of stealing a van full of weaponry. Four of the men, Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Fred Fenster (Benicio del Toro), Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollack), and Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), concoct a plan of revenge against the NYPD, and the hesitant Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) joins in. After a deluge of plot twists and scenarios that seem completely out of place, the group finds themselves on the West Coast, at the mercy of a well-known man by the name of Keyser Soze, whose lawyer gives each of them a file documentation of their lives as watched by Soze. The motive: each of them has wronged Soze at some point in the past, and their chance for repentance comes with the raid on a cocaine deal set to go down in three days. All of this is narrated and seen in the mind of Kint, played with a fiendish glee by Kevin Spacey, who turns in a well-rounded performance. The rest of the cast also leave lasting impressions: Stephen Baldwin makes a great all-around bad boy, Benicio del Toro is increasingly witty, Kevin Pollack is the ideal picture of gruff and uneasy, and Gabriel Byrne instills in his character a growing sense of unease. But their talents are ultimately cast into a lost cause. "The Usual Suspects" manipulates its viewers to the end, taking us where only it wants to go, leaving no room for speculation or thought on the events at hand. It does this by throwing so much at the audience at once that the fear of missing out on something intrical to the overall plot becomes unbearable. In trying to think about what was going on, and watching each scene with full concentration, I almost went mad. In effect, the ending to Christopher McQuarrie's screenplay has little impact. You will be surprised at the movie's final turn of events, but the material prior to it lacks enough interest or even coherence to give the twist any logical sense. To me, the ending seems more like a blind leap towards greatness than a satisfying payoff to the film's convoluted script. Many will disagree with my thoughts on "The Usual Suspects," and some may even recommend watching it twice to understand the film's twists. I did, and came up short both times. Aspirations of greatness are evident throughout the plot, but they amount to little more than just aspirations. As much as I wanted to understand the central story, I can't forgive a film that throws so much into the pot that the soup is too thick to thin out again.

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A Masterpiece Especially the Ending!!
Usual Suspects is an excellent well plotted movie. It sent chills down my spine when I realized Kevin Spacey was Kazer Soze. You must see this movie!