Film: Usual Suspects
May. 4th, 2016 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOne of the classic films I saw at some point on TV, but wasn't paying enough attention to really follow at the time.
Mostly recounted by Verbal Kint, a small-time confidence trickster in an interview with the police after a bloodbath at a freighter ship, recounting how he and four other guys met at a police line-up, did a robbery, fell into a job set up by legendary illusive crime-lord Keyser Soze, and how he ended up involved in the massacre.
And questioning, what else is going on that makes these events only make sense in retrospect.
It's not exactly a heist movie, but it has some of the same feel, it's a classic if you don't object to fairly violent crime movies, and enjoy an air of intellectual questioning.
Lots of spoilers
I definitely enjoyed it, but I was left asking, what actually happened? I thought the internet would answer immediately which bits were real and which weren't, but it didn't seem to help a lot!
Almost everyone agrees VK is KS if anyone is, and spun most of the tale on the spot. I think it's fairly clear that's what the film intended to show at the end: the focus on the names inspiring his story, and on him suddenly losing his physical impairments.
Did he make up the entire thing, apart from the boat? The first heist in NY, everything? Reasons to think not, the names of the rest of his team were not apparently inspired by the bulletin board, and Dean Keaton at least was known by the police to be involved. And he told that bit to the DA, if there had been no such robbery in NY, it might have raised flags. Presumably everything with Redfoot and maybe Kobayashi was invented, but some of those events must have had real-world analogues, to get them to the boat at all.
Why was Verbal talking to the customs officer at all? Was it part of his plan, to connect Dean as a potential identity for Soze? Then why didn't he tell any of that to the DA in the first place? Why didn't he have more of the story pre-prepared? Was it improvised? Some scenes seem to suggest he made stuff up in response to what the officer was asking. But then why talk at all? Why not just stay clammed up?
Did he know he was being recorded?
Did he plan to be arrested at all? If not, how come we're not shown where he's caught? If so, wasn't he worried about having mug shots taken?
How much of the back-story about being a gratuitously ruthless killer from Hungary was true? Some of it must be, at least in reputation, as the Hungarian in the hospital believed something like that, and the Fed had heard of it. If it wasn't, why the Hungarians there? But if so, did he establish an identity as a small-time confidence trickster in the US later? Or did he decide to "pretend" to be KS, backed by that sort of pre-existing legend?
Was Kobayashi supposed to be Japanese or part-Japanese? Or just randomly have a Japanese name?
Are we seeing what Verbal's imagining, or what the officer is imagining? Presumably, it must be Verbal, because how else would Kobayashi look like Verbal's friend/driver/colleague at the end? Unless he described him, but wouldn't he prefer to make someone up? But he made up the name, so is the Kobayashi in the story fictional based partly on the real person?
In this film, I'm not annoyed so much of it was undercut. I'm not sure why. Maybe because the middle was interesting, but the emotional focus was on Kint's voice-over, not on his success, failure, or survival in the flashback, so we don't feel we emotionally invested in something which was undermined.
It works without those questions, I'm ok if they're not really answered. But I'm curious if any have clearly acceptable answers.
In case it helps, there's a fairly detailed list of what's shown on the bulletin board here: http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/zenosusp.htm
Mostly recounted by Verbal Kint, a small-time confidence trickster in an interview with the police after a bloodbath at a freighter ship, recounting how he and four other guys met at a police line-up, did a robbery, fell into a job set up by legendary illusive crime-lord Keyser Soze, and how he ended up involved in the massacre.
And questioning, what else is going on that makes these events only make sense in retrospect.
It's not exactly a heist movie, but it has some of the same feel, it's a classic if you don't object to fairly violent crime movies, and enjoy an air of intellectual questioning.
Lots of spoilers
I definitely enjoyed it, but I was left asking, what actually happened? I thought the internet would answer immediately which bits were real and which weren't, but it didn't seem to help a lot!
Almost everyone agrees VK is KS if anyone is, and spun most of the tale on the spot. I think it's fairly clear that's what the film intended to show at the end: the focus on the names inspiring his story, and on him suddenly losing his physical impairments.
Did he make up the entire thing, apart from the boat? The first heist in NY, everything? Reasons to think not, the names of the rest of his team were not apparently inspired by the bulletin board, and Dean Keaton at least was known by the police to be involved. And he told that bit to the DA, if there had been no such robbery in NY, it might have raised flags. Presumably everything with Redfoot and maybe Kobayashi was invented, but some of those events must have had real-world analogues, to get them to the boat at all.
Why was Verbal talking to the customs officer at all? Was it part of his plan, to connect Dean as a potential identity for Soze? Then why didn't he tell any of that to the DA in the first place? Why didn't he have more of the story pre-prepared? Was it improvised? Some scenes seem to suggest he made stuff up in response to what the officer was asking. But then why talk at all? Why not just stay clammed up?
Did he know he was being recorded?
Did he plan to be arrested at all? If not, how come we're not shown where he's caught? If so, wasn't he worried about having mug shots taken?
How much of the back-story about being a gratuitously ruthless killer from Hungary was true? Some of it must be, at least in reputation, as the Hungarian in the hospital believed something like that, and the Fed had heard of it. If it wasn't, why the Hungarians there? But if so, did he establish an identity as a small-time confidence trickster in the US later? Or did he decide to "pretend" to be KS, backed by that sort of pre-existing legend?
Was Kobayashi supposed to be Japanese or part-Japanese? Or just randomly have a Japanese name?
Are we seeing what Verbal's imagining, or what the officer is imagining? Presumably, it must be Verbal, because how else would Kobayashi look like Verbal's friend/driver/colleague at the end? Unless he described him, but wouldn't he prefer to make someone up? But he made up the name, so is the Kobayashi in the story fictional based partly on the real person?
In this film, I'm not annoyed so much of it was undercut. I'm not sure why. Maybe because the middle was interesting, but the emotional focus was on Kint's voice-over, not on his success, failure, or survival in the flashback, so we don't feel we emotionally invested in something which was undermined.
It works without those questions, I'm ok if they're not really answered. But I'm curious if any have clearly acceptable answers.
In case it helps, there's a fairly detailed list of what's shown on the bulletin board here: http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/zenosusp.htm