SPOLER ALERT, If you haven't seen this one, don't read from here on down.
I'm sure my friends who claimed that it was the most unpredictable ending ever in a film will think Im being sarcastic when I claim that Verbal was my first guess for Keyser Soze. I thought that it would be a good twist if that were the case, but later into the movie I started to second guess myself. After all, from what I had heard, this film didn't just have a good twist, it had a amazingly unlikely twist. So then I started to focus heavily on the possibility that it could actually be special agent Kujan. Silly me. Another reason for the shift away from Verbal is because I figured it would be a little unbalanced if one of the ensemble were chosen as Soze.
Anyway, I don't know how I figured the movie could rationalize agent Kujan being the villain. I didn't think that far ahead, but by my standards, that would have been the amazing twist. Verbal was a good one, but simply by the fact that he is crippled is enough to make him the most likely candidate for a "good twist," and therefore the most likely one.
One thing that crossed my mind is that when the movie came out there may not have been a thriller so daring. There are plenty of movies that have been made since that have influences from this one. Perhaps I was unknowingly jaded by the movies that have drawn heavily from this one, such as Swordfish.
I'm sure my friends who claimed that it was the most unpredictable ending ever in a film will think Im being sarcastic when I claim that Verbal was my first guess for Keyser Soze. I thought that it would be a good twist if that were the case, but later into the movie I started to second guess myself. After all, from what I had heard, this film didn't just have a good twist, it had a amazingly unlikely twist. So then I started to focus heavily on the possibility that it could actually be special agent Kujan. Silly me. Another reason for the shift away from Verbal is because I figured it would be a little unbalanced if one of the ensemble were chosen as Soze.
Anyway, I don't know how I figured the movie could rationalize agent Kujan being the villain. I didn't think that far ahead, but by my standards, that would have been the amazing twist. Verbal was a good one, but simply by the fact that he is crippled is enough to make him the most likely candidate for a "good twist," and therefore the most likely one.
One thing that crossed my mind is that when the movie came out there may not have been a thriller so daring. There are plenty of movies that have been made since that have influences from this one. Perhaps I was unknowingly jaded by the movies that have drawn heavily from this one, such as Swordfish.
1 comment:
Hi Adam,
Kudos on the blog --- there's some excellent writing here. (I know: people will say I'm biased!).
I think my favorite quality of "The Usual Suspects" was the dread it evoked by leaving Soze unseen (until you realize at the end that you had in fact seen him). I felt that it was not so much the plot twist itself that delivered the kick, but the long build-up; the palpable fear in the voices of the criminals who described Soze's monstrously cruel exploits lent the character an especially chilling edge. It reminded me of those old campfire tales my friends and I used to tell in the mountains, vying to come up with the most nightmarish story. The fiend is always scarier when he's lurking unseen in the shadows, waiting to strike.
Re "Eyes Wide Shut", perhaps you weren't aware that Kubrick died before he could finish the film. I think Spielberg completed it. I'm sure Kubrick would have insisted on imported beer in the fridge (Bud? What a howler!). There has been some speculation that he was ill during the filming, and it might have clouded his artistic judgment. I agree with you that Tom Cruise was miscast as an internist, and Pollack excelled in his creepy role. In any case, no one with whom I discussed the film feels confident he or she knows what Kubrick (our hero!) was trying to say with it, and it left some of us with a discomfiting feeling.
And, one final note in passing: One of the Times' movie critics agreed with you about "Vicki Cristina Barcelona"; he liked the film, but disliked what he called "the pompous narrator." You called that one!
Dad
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