Review of The Usual Suspects (1995) by J-Shap — 24 Aug 2011

An ugly word that often gets unfairly tossed around in film criticism is manipulative. This word seems like sudden death for any movie, and is often used to describe a film that tries to play to the emotions of its audience.

A more accurate way of using this term is a film that has little confidence in what it does and simply tries to throw things at the audience, hoping for validity. The Usual Suspects is a great example.

While it certainly does paint an interesting picture, the characters are stock, and without interesting play between the players, it over compensates with plot twists and story holes, mixed rather uninspired interrogation scenes.

There is little to enjoy in The Usual Suspects other than trying to put together its story, and once you do that you realize it is not even an interesting story, but simply feeds the audience so little, that there is little payoff to learning the surprises.