The Usual Suspect Rhetorical Analysis

Paper #1: The Usual Suspects

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” The film begins with a scene of two men surrounded by fire and dead bodies on a boat in San Pedro, California. The two men talk for a while, then a mystery man shoots a man named Keaton, then sets him on fire. FBI agents appear the next day to investigate the crime scene and interrogate the two survivors of 27 killed men. One survivor is a Hungarian is describing a man named Kieser Söze to a sketch artist. The other survivor is Verbal Kent who is telling the police everything he knows for immunity. When Kent begins his story, it fades into six weeks ago in New York City where the NYPD gathers five different criminals that are suspected

of a car-jacking. There, they plan revenge on the NYPD and to rob a corrupt police taxi cab service that escorts drug smugglers.

They later meet a man named Kobayashi and blackmails them into destroying a ship filled with cocaine coming from San Pedro. The film climaxes on the night that the four men attack the men at the pier. They discover that there’s no cocaine on the boat and soon everyone of the four men left are killed except Keaton and Verbal. The scene ends when presumably Kieser Söze shoots Keaton. The falling action is in the present when Verbal finishes his story, admits to the FBI agent that the whole setup from the beginning was Keaton’s idea and that he was actually the mysterious Kieser Söze. The resolution of the movie ends with Verbal leaving the building, not being held by the police anymore. But the FBI agent is realizing that details from Verbals story was actually words appearing from various things around the interrogation room. He quickly realizes that it was all made up and chases after Verbal, but he is already entering a car that is being driven by

Kobayashi. Verbal Kint is Keyser Söze.
Aiming to be a neo-noir film, The Usual Suspects was extremely well thought out and well edited to create an intense, exciting plot.

In the end of the movie, every little detail that was brought up didn’t seem important at the time but became very important in the end. The beginning was very good at setting up the film and what type of movie it was aiming to be. It gave explanations of the main characters and explained their aims for the movie.. For example, the scene where they’re plotting revenge on the NYPD, it explains their motives for the movie and their character traits. However the beginning was very slow in the storyline and in pacing, the plot hard to keep interest in up until the climax. As soon as the plot got more intense and there was more action, the editing changed from close ups and slow pacing shots to quick moving, cross-cutting shots that made the events more intense. Such as the very last scene when the twist is revealed, the emotions were highlighted by the dramatic shots of the FBI agent chasing Verbal Kent (Kaiser) out of the building. The plot events were extremely interesting as the plot began to twist, and the ending was a realistic but surprising to the film

type.
The editing in this movie accentuated the important details throughout the movie and intense and emotional plot twists in the end. Although, in the beginning, it was very slow pacing and hard to remember all the details that were said that would be important in the end. For example, the scene were the five men plot their revenge on the NYPD, it was a long talking scene in medium shots. They were talking pretty fast and it was hard to keep up with. However, after the climax is when the pace started to pick up. There was a lot more action and intense scene so there were a lot of different shots very close together. In the scene of the attack on the boat, the editor did a lot of cross-cutting to people shooting people, main characters dying, the boat catching fire, etc… Also, the editing throughout the movie, switching from the present time to “six weeks ago” was very effective in keeping the viewers attention. And lastly, showing the ending from the beginning was a very creative editing choice and made the ending twist a lot more dramatic and revealing.
I would definitely recommend this film to anyone who is interested in plot twisting dramas. When I first started the movie I was really interested because my dad said it was a really good movie, I have never really heard anything about the plot of the movie, so my expectations were pretty high. When I started the film, I lost interest fairly quickly because I thought it was full of action and intense scenes, but most of the first half was kind of boring to me; I was also focused on taking notes on the editing and plot so I could have been more distracted than I wanted to be. But when things started to get more intense and unravel, I quickly became very interested again. To conclude, the further along the movie went, the more you realize it’s not how it seems; The Usual Suspects had excellent casting, an intense plot, and creative editing that made the movie a thrilling classic.