End Games is a feature in which I discuss
notable endings in film history. There will be
spoilers, obviously.
At the risk of
turning this column into an endless regurgitation of my thoughts on twist endings,
let me begin by describing what I feel is the worst type of twist: the kind that completely negates
all that had come before. In essence, these twists end the film by telling the
audience that a good chunk of what they had just seen didn’t actually happen. It usually cheapens the
experience, and the audience will leave feeling like they just wasted their time. Endings
like Shutter Island’s, the
film I discussed last week, work because instead of erasing the content of
the film, they allow us to see the film in a new, revealing light. The movie
that preceded them isn’t nullified, but just altered slightly. That is not
quite the case with Bryan Singer’s 1995 thriller The Usual Suspects, which may have one of the most famous twist
endings in film history. However, that does not make it one of the best.
Looking back upon it with fresh eyes, I find myself more and more unimpressed
with the film’s final reveal.
This may be a
minority opinion, but I’m hardly the only one who feels this way. Many
prominent critics, including Roger Ebert, did not fall in love with The Usual Suspects back when it first
came out. However, I should state that I like the movie quite a bit more than
many of its most vocal detractors. Singer is a talented director, and he
deserves every bit of the success that came as a result of this movie. The Usual Suspects definitely feels like a good crime movie, many of
the individual scenes are expertly staged, and the chemistry of the leads is
superb. The problem is it doesn’t add up to nearly as much as it
thinks it does. The plot of the film is this: Kevin Spacey’s Verbal Kint tells
a story to Chazz Palminteri’s Special Agent Kujan. The story involves his time
with a group of crooks that includes Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin
Pollak and Benicio del Toro. At the end, we learn that most of that story was a
lie and Verbal himself is actually a criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze.
That’s all there really is to it.
That said, the
actual reveal of the twist is handled incredibly well by Singer, and it only
truly unravels when you start to ruminate on the film as a whole. It begins as
the camera moves in on Palminteri, clearly content that his case is now closed.
Then, the realization starts to slowly come over him, and the audience also
just begins to catch up. Dialogue from the rest of the film is played back, and
Singer essentially tells us that the entire film we’ve just experienced is,
more or less, an act of deception. It may be skillfully crafted deception, but it's deception nonetheless.
The Usual Suspects is very much a movie of its time, and I
doubt it would exist without the rise of Tarantino that occurred in the early
’90s. It’s not nearly the knockoff that a lot of movies of its era were, but the
“cool” depiction of the criminals and the profane dialogue certainly seem to
come from the same area code. The twist at the end also acts as a fine
signifier of this film’s place in history. In the wake of Tarantino, writers
and filmmakers felt a need to try and be as clever as possible. This became
doubly true after Pulp Fiction, an
insanely creative and intricately plotted film that played with chronology in
some truly savvy ways. The Usual Suspects
similarly jumps around in time, but not nearly in the same fashion. There are
two timelines, the first being Palminteri’s questioning of Spacey, and the
other being the actual story that Spacey is telling. However, the latter
timeline is erased in the final few minutes. When the film is over, there are
only a few events we can confirm: the shootout on the boat, and everything
after. If we're shown something that occurs before that, who knows?
I take no joy in
deeming this ending ineffective, especially because at one point or another I
have admired the work of just about everyone involved with this movie. Singer
and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie have collaborated many times since
then, and more often than not the end result has been strong. In particular,
Singer seems to be a much better filmmaker when he’s engaging the geekier, more family-friendly side
of his brain. The tough guy world of The
Usual Suspects doesn’t quite suit him as well as, say, the X-Men. That is
not a negative thing at all, and I'll even admit to liking some of what he did on Jack the Giant Slayer. As for McQuarrie,
he’s written several good screenplays and just last year he directed the
solid Jack Reacher. In many ways, The Usual Suspects is unlike anything
else either of them has made since then, and while it’s a superficially
entertaining film the ending only highlights just how shallow many of its
pleasures are.
I was also
surprised to find that Kevin Spacey’s performance didn’t seem quite as
impressive as I recalled, and I say that as a huge Spacey fan. This same year
he starred in David Fincher’s Se7en,
and his work in that is a huge part of what makes that film's third act effective.
As for The Usual Suspects, I think it
was more a result of the part earning him the acclaim rather than his actual
performance. I don’t mean to diminish it too greatly, but there are several
other Spacey performances I prefer to this one. (I think he’s fantastic in House of Cards, by the way.) That said,
this film did win him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, so what do I know?
Despite that, he
is undeniably great when it matters most, and that is the final sequence of the
film. As he leaves the police station and slowly morphs from Verbal Kint into
Keyser Soze, you can feel Spacey’s star is being born. If it weren’t for this
final reveal, I highly doubt anyone would be talking much about The Usual Suspects anymore. It’s a
diverting film, and a well-directed one, but the ending is in many ways the
exact kind of resolution I dislike. It doesn’t really hold much value outside
of the obvious surprise factor, it comes right at the end so the film can bail
without dealing with the consequences, and it essentially erases many of the
scenes that the audience had to sit through before. It’s a fine piece of
audience manipulation, but does it really mean anything? I would argue that it
does not.
No comments:
Post a Comment