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The Usual Suspects (1995) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-19 04:30:01
Imported:
2026-08
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Content

Thanks for voting for this one in the Random Sub-2h Movies poll! I really hope you enjoy my reaction! 😊

I'm looking forward to your comments. Please enjoy! [Direct link here.]

✦ KL

Files

The Usual Suspects (1995) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction

Comments

Steve Mercier

Who's going to bed? Not my stupid fucking ass! Ha! Good shit...

Nathan Jasper

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he didn't exist. Love that line. Still one of the best twists ever in a film.

nouvelle_vague

Definitely a reaction worth staying up until 2 a.m. to enjoy. I think the movie works really well on repeat viewings because it’s not just a ‘twist’ movie. It’s really well acted across the board and the pacing is really good. I’ve seen it at least 10 times and it’s still good. I love the mythologizing of Keyser Soze. They build the character up to a level where he can’t possibly as perfectly huge and evil as he’s made out… and then he almost surpasses our expectations in the end. That’s an incredible feat to pull off. And once the movie got a little buzz… it was a thing to not say who Keyser Soze is, so that added to the mythology. I actually saw this opening night and I don’t know anyone who saw the twist coming when they saw it at that time. It felt like, to me anyway, there hadn't been a big plot twist ending (and there would soon be many every year) or such an unreliable narrator in awhile in a hit movie. When first seeing it I was really confused as to why Pete Posthelwaite, an English actor was playing a British character had a weird/fluid accent and had a Japanese name. Why wouldn't they change his name after they did the casting and what accent was he doing? That maybe could have helped clue me in to what was coming, but it sure didn’t. I think it’s up to each person to decide how much actually happened. Obviously none of it could have happened. Or all of it could have happened with a bunch of changed names and a little omission. I thought it was kind of funny that you were so excited for Giancarlo Esposito. I love Giancarlo Esposito, but this cast is stacked. Of course we’re here because you haven’t seen everything, so no judgement. Have you not seen Benicio del Toro in much/at all? I think he’s one of the best actors of his generation and this is an early role. He felt his character didn’t have a lot to do, except die, so he gave him an outrageous accent and stole half the scenes he was in. I loved Fenster. Pollak is great in this too. You said the rest of the group didn’t serve a lot of purpose, but I think they did pick a crack squad to try to get him on the boat. McManus shoots two guys jostling in the head with two different guns. That’s, of course, impossible but very impressive. We didn’t see a lot of Hockney’s explosive expertise, but he did do some work on the pier. I think they were more than just random guys. Gabriel Byrne (Keaton) was in a bunch of cool/successful 90s movies. He was probably a bigger name than Spacey at the time. Kevin Pollak (Hockney) had just been one of the main actors in A Few Good Men too. Lots of top tier character actors in this. If you re-watch to edit, keep an eye on the final scene with Chazz Palmienteri outside (Agent Kuwyan), Christopher McQuarrie plays a cop in the background and he practically breaks the fourth wall smirking at what he pulled off with the script.

Ray H

On rewatch, you’ll notice the initial scene with Keyser Soze & Keaton, you can hear it’s Kevin Spacey. I’m glad hardly anyone notices it on first watch.

Movies with KL

Thanks for your thoughts! I will definitely look out for Chris next time.

DarthChef

Favorite fun movie fact; Gabriel Byrne (Keaton) was convinced he was Keyser. I dont know why he didnt read the whole script, maybe it was part of his "process". So when he saw the movie at the premiere and the reveal was made, he was as shocked as the audience.

Movies with KL

Hahaha that's hilarious, poor guy. But I wonder why he would have thought that without acting out a scene confirming he was Keyser?

Tyler Foster

FTR, Giancarlo was the actor who I said I was excited to see you see in the weekly update post. Also, you were so busy explaining a thought that you missed another familiar face. When Giancarlo first arrives at the hospital, the doctor he's talking to is none other than Agent Coulson, Clark Gregg. I thought you might recognize his voice after he put the hospital mask on, but nope (and then he's not in the subsequent hospital scenes). Also, I was surprised you never commented on Benicio Del Toro, who played the mumbly Fenster, and who you have seen in the MCU as The Collector and in Star Wars: The Last Jedi as DJ, the man who helps Finn and Rose. Lastly, yes, Pete Postlethwaite was in James and the Giant Peach. I think this movie's okay, but one thing that has always baffled me is this: Why do they show the scene of Keaton on the boat at the beginning of the movie? What would make more sense to me is to show the version you get snippets of during Verbal's interrogation, where you only see shadowy figures on the boat and can't hear what they're saying. Given they show the conversation in full, it means that Kujan's interpretation can never make sense to the audience -- if Keaton is Keyser, then who is Keyser shooting? If they had shown the figures and you couldn't be sure it was Keaton who got shot, then both Verbal and Kujan's interpretations of this moment would be plausible. The shot of the ropes and boxes would be a misdirect, which the audience will accept as Verbal's POV when he says that's where he was, even if the movie never shows you Verbal hiding back there. The movie even establishes the idea that eyewitnesses were once sure that Keaton died only for him to turn up alive, too. McQuarrie won an Academy Award for his screenplay, but then struggled in Hollywood for over a decade. In the late 2000s, he reteamed with Singer on a film he only agreed to help write in order to pay off all his remaining bills and leave Hollywood, but on that film, he met Tom Cruise. Over the next 17 years, McQuarrie and Cruise have become inseparable, with McQuarrie doing credited or uncredited script work on almost every movie Cruise has made since, and even graduating to director on several of Cruise's projects (Edge of Tomorrow is one of the films they collaborated on that you've already seen).

Jason Chirevas

One of the great Cool Guy crime dramas of the 90s… …that, unfortunately, doesn’t know how a grand jury works. Kind of a weird mistake to make for a movie like this. Still, always a fun revisit. One of the best in-theater experiences too.

HugoBoss435

Such a good movie…definitely in my top 10 list. Saw way back in my college days, so glad you knew nothing about who Keyser Söze really was. Great reaction, just like me when I first saw it!

Movies with KL

I bet the theater experience was wild haha! Thanks for watching!

Movies with KL

I'll have to look out for Clark Gregg next time. ☺️ Honestly, I agree with you on the opening scene. I kept thinking about it a lot as the movie progressed and your criticism of it makes sense.

Jason Chirevas

We saw it twice at the time. The second was a Friday night show in Manhattan with a crowd who didn’t know what was coming. That was fun.

Rob Stanley

I actually love to rewatch this. It was too stressful first time round, it's kind of peaceful now because it's a bit slow, beautifully shot. McQuarrie, the writer, is Tom Cruise's writer/director now. He's done every mission impossible for the last ten years, wrote Maverick, etc etc.

Rob Stanley

I'd read the scripts for pulp fiction and reservoir dogs before I saw them; this was the first movie I saw where I was like "what the fuck just happened"

Just Plain Bob

kaiielle, as you noted, Verbal/Keyser is the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. Aside from the robbery of the truck in Queens and the subsequent line-up, we have no way of knowing what, if anything, we’re told/shown is true. We know that the “New York’s Finest Taxi Service” must’ve been robbed because that would have made a huge splash in the papers. But we have no way of knowing whether our usual suspects were responsible or Verbal/Keyser simply wove that story into the larger narrative as he did so much else. Same goes for the robbery/murders in the garage. We don’t even really know that Verbal is Keyser. It could’ve been a ghost story told by criminals and he simply adopted the background as his own as a way of intimidating others. My personal take is that most of the story is probably true. I worked for more than twenty years investigating public corruption and I’ve been involved in a lot of admission-seeking interviews. My experience was that, when lying, people instinctively weave as much of the truth into their story as they can. It gives them less to have to remember later. On a final note, I don’t know if you noticed, but they clearly identify Hockney as the person responsible for the truck jacking that led to the police line-up. If you remember, Kujan mentioned to Verbal/Keyser that you could always tell the guilty party in a jail cell because they knew they were caught and try to get some sleep. In the scene in the jail cell after the line-up, Hockney is laying down on the bench, arm over his eyes, trying to sleep. Only the chatter of the others interrupts him. Far more telling is their initial meeting with Kobayashi. He lists each of their infractions against Keyser, letting them know why they were chosen. He explicitly states that Hockney robbed the truck in Queens. If you re-watch the scene, the others give him a look and he responds with a little shrug, like “what do you want from me, I’m a thief, how was I supposed to know it would lead to this.” I’ve loved this movie for almost thirty years, ever since I first saw it. It’s very near the top of my personal “you gotta see this” list when I meet other cinephiles. Loved your reaction and was gratified to see that the twist ending still holds up (twist endings have become much more popular in the years since the movie was released). Anyway, very fun reaction and I look forward to many more.

Movies with KL

Thanks for the info Bob! Wow, investigating public corruption.. that sounds like both a very stressful but also very rewarding career.

Just Plain Bob

It was a blast. As often happens with the best things in life, I fell bass ackwards into it. I had a bachelor’s degree in accounting and worked for a season for an accounting firm doing financial audits (boring) and taxes (living death). When I switched jobs I had no idea if I was really cut out for it. I got my CPA certification and became a Certified Fraud Examiner, to boot. By the time I left, I’d either conducted or supervised approximately 200 investigations, roughly 150 of which resulted in successful prosecutions. My old boss/mentor liked to tell the story of the time he went to a fraud conference out of state. A favorite occupation of investigators is telling war stories. When he told his, several people commented on how much fraud we have in our state. He told them, “You’ve got it in your state, too. You just don’t have anybody looking for it.” At that time, most state comptrollers relied on audit staff to investigate. We were one of only three states with a dedicated investigations unit. Contrary to what most people believe, auditors are not trained to look for fraud and that’s not their aim. They’re auditing to make sure the financial statements fairly represent the financial activities of the past year. That can be true even with theft or corruption occurring. In my time, I testified before countless grand juries, gave depositions and testified as an expert witness at several trials. I caught mayors, policemen (including one chief), school bookkeepers, clerks at utility districts, city recorders and many others stealing money from municipal coffers. It never ceased to give me a sense of gratification that my work made a difference. Plus, it was challenging (you wouldn’t believe the schemes people cook up) and fun. I actually cut a vacation short for one of my investigations and can’t count how many times I got to thinking about one, thought I might have hit on an idea that would work, and went back into the office in the middle of the night and worked clear thru the next day, poring over records and building spreadsheets.