Chinatown vs The Usual Suspects

Chinatown

The whole film is told from Gittes' point of view. You know what he knows, you discover what he discovers and you are wrong alongside him. His masculine confidence and professional expertise get taken apart piece by piece. When the investigation fails, it's his way of seeing the world that fails.

The Usual Suspects

Verbal Kint tells the whole story of the film to a federal agent. Then the final minutes reveal that everything you watched was fiction. He made it up on the spot, using objects he could see in the interrogation room.

Chinatown

I feel like Gittes' persona suggests a man who was already defeated before the film begins. His world-weary competence, his professional cynicism and his California suntan are the costume of someone who learned something terrible about himself. He has been acting normal ever since. The events of the film reveal what he learned.

The Usual Suspects

Kint's voiceover is smooth and sympathetic, and it guides you through a past he made up. Because he tells it as someone looking back, the lie sounds as trustworthy as a confession.

Chinatown

Every noir convention says the detective solves the crime and the woman is saved. Polanski follows every convention until the final scene, then refuses each one. Evelyn is shot, Noah Cross escapes and Chinatown claims them all. The film's power comes from building the expectation it destroys. The genre is what made the horror of the ending possible.

The Usual Suspects

Singer and McQuarrie build a conventional crime story with an ensemble cast, then knock the whole thing down in the final scene. That is, the genre itself turns out to be the misdirection.