Review of The Usual Suspects (1995) by David S — 30 Dec 2014

I guess not everybody can have the same opinion on a widely praised film. In my honest opinion, I think this movie is very overrated and I don't think that it deserves a 8.7 on imdb. I will start off with what I liked and what I didn't like that kept this movie from being good in my opinion.

Kevin Spacey gave a great performance as Verbal Kint and he was the most interesting character in the whole movie. The twists that the film brings in its final half hour are clever and they brought some intelligence in an otherwise average crime/thriller.

The movie had a good score and the cinematography was good as well. Now I start with the movie's flaws. Everything with the story and most of its characters just felt really average and I didn't think there was anything truly special brought to the table.

Every actor besides Kevin Spacey I felt never stood out and Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro, Gabriel Byrne, and Kevin Pollak never brought anything to their characters and they ended up being forgettable in my opinion.

The mystery going on wasn't very interesting and the movie didn't do anything to truly hook me in. The pacing got slow at times and I felt the movie was trying to explain too much in so little time.

I didn't feel anything for the characters and when push came to shove for them, I just said " Oh well." Bryan Singer made mutants interesting in the X-Men franchise, I don't know why he couldn't do that for me with the characters in this crime/mystery film.

Overall, it is not a good feeling to me when I end up feeling differently about a critically acclaimed movie but no matter what, I will always give my honest opinion and I feel that this film has way more credit than it deserves.