What everyone thinks: The Usual Suspects is a great film because of the twist. Verbal Kint is Keyser Söze. We're not that sorry for giving that away; Kevin Spacey said it in his Oscar acceptance speech when winning an award for the role, so that shouldn't be a spoiler almost two decades on. Aside from the line-up scene the twist is the most talked about moment of Bryan Singer's film; suddenly the previous two hours are thrown into ambiguity and it becomes clear the joke's been on us the whole time. How could that not be the defining point? The real reason it's good: It's perfectly plotted from the start. Wasn't that bit in The LEGO Movie when its revealed its all part of our world (oh, actually sorry for that spoiler) awesome? Suddenly the zany LEGO world we'd been in was giving an overarching real-world logic; things weren't crazy because the film wanted to appear kooky, it was crazy because it was from the mind of kid. Does that mean the previous notions of Lord Business segregating the worlds and all the silly hijinks aren't funny on a simple level? Of course not. The same is true of The Usual Suspects. By any conventional narrative The Usual Suspects is over when Kujan concludes it's Keaton who's Söze; from that standpoint you still have a cracking crime thriller that works on its own internal logic. The twist pushes the film over into greatness, but it only works because everything else before it was solid anyway.
