9 Smart Movies That Tricked Us Into Rooting For The Bad Guys

1. It's Got You Hooked So Tight You Don't See The Bad Things - Verbal Kint In The Usual Suspects

As The Usual Suspects enters its final minutes the audience is unknowingly all ready to be floored. Verbal Kint has been denounced as a pawn in the plot of the scheming Dean Keaton to clear his name and we'€™re all non the wiser to what's really going on. Now while we shouldn't be able to guess what's about to come faxing in, it is strange that we view Verbal as an innocent in all this.

From what we've been shown, Verbal isn't really a good guy at all. He's the one who came up with the attack on New York's Finest and very early on kills Saul Berg when Keaton (who, lest we forget, is being set up as the big bad) can't. That he's eventually revealed to be the crime lord behind it all needn't be important; he wields that he's got immunity from the judge, but he shouldn't really get a pass from the audience based on the story he's telling.

And yet you give him it. Everyone who's ever experienced the glorious rug pull overlooks his character faults because in the traditional film narrative our protagonist is the good guy and even though this film feels different, we don't treat it as such.

I've raved about The Usual Suspects and the strength of its Oscar winning script a lot, but praise once again has to go to Christopher McQuarrie who abused genre conventions to trick everyone (except that smart aleck who says they guessed the twist five minutes in).

Any more movies that totally tricked you? Let us know down in the comments.