The only survivor of a massacre at a San Pedro harbor tells a customs agent how 5 criminals were brought together by the mysterious crime lord Keyser Söze. The whole film is built around one of cinema's most famous unreliable narrators, meaning a storyteller you can't trust.
The Usual Suspects is a 1995 crime, mystery and thriller film directed by Bryan Singer. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (3 narrative and 1 editing), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Chinatown uses several of the same techniques.
Telling the story through a character you can't trust, because they are lying, mentally unwell or fooling themselves. At some point, you have to rethink what you were told.
How this film uses it
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.
Where to see it
The closing sequence. The customs agent scans his bulletin board and recognizes the names, faces and places Kint used to build his story as he went.
Having a narrator tell the story from some point after it happened. The events feel like memory, and you sense early on that something will be lost.
How this film uses it
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.
Where to see it
Kint's line to Kujan during the interrogation, repeated at the end: 'The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist'. In hindsight, the line describes his own deception.
Cutting between the present and scattered, out-of-order flashbacks, the way a painful memory comes back in pieces. You put the backstory together as the character remembers it.
How this film uses it
The flashbacks weave the present in the interrogation room together with the reconstructed past. The rhythm feels like someone reaching back into memory. Only at the end do you find out the whole structure was made up.
Where to see it
The multi-character flashback sequence that reconstructs the lineup. Each criminal's version of events cuts back to the room in the present.
Building up the usual genre expectations, like the villain getting caught and the climax approaching, then refusing to deliver them. Your own anticipation is what makes the letdown hit so hard.
How this film uses it
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.
Where to see it
Kint walking away from the precinct. His limp disappears, and his own body gives away the fiction you accepted for 2 hours.
Questions
The Usual Suspects: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does The Usual Suspects use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Usual Suspects (1995): Unreliable Narrator, Retrospective Voiceover, Fractured Memory Editing and Expectation Collapse.
Who directed The Usual Suspects?
Bryan Singer directed The Usual Suspects, released in 1995. CineCode also covers Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).
What films are similar to The Usual Suspects?
Films that share techniques with The Usual Suspects include Chinatown (1974), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Virgin Suicides (2000), The Shining (1980).
