The Usual Suspects By Brian Singer

The film The Usual Suspects by Brian Singer is about a group of 5 men who are joined together by a series of criminal activities and the suspicion of their involvement in them. The central themes presented in this movie are of corruption, deception and fear of the unknown. There are many cases where these principles are illustrated, especially in the characters themselves being notorious law-breakers and even the police officers being exposed as unethical at times. Deception turns out to be an essential theme, particularly at the end of the film, when the audience discovers that who they were lead to believe was a menial character, had actually been the evil mastermind the entire time. This “devil” that instilled fear into every other character

These techniques being that, dialogue means nothing, characters must break cliché, surprise and twist, the creation of a MacGuffin and montage gives you control. The first element coined by Hitchcock presented in this film is that dialogue means nothing. This is expressed in the interrogation scene where Roger “Verbal” Kint, depicted as an incompetent cripple, is being questioned by Customs Agent Dave Kuyan. He begins to ask the officers for trivial things like a cup of coffee, and is very insistent on it. He does this many times, and in turn distracting the officers as the try to get through the interview. Kint uses anecdotes that seem to be meaningless, and of a personal matter to stall, and steer Kujan off topic. However, just

This is called “the MacGuffin” effect, where the plot devices become meaningless props, and the focus is driven more toward the suspense of the scene. In this case, the MacGuffin is Keyser Soze himself. The goal is essentially to capture and prosecute him, but this seems less prominent as the audience focuses on the immediate drama they are faced with in each individual situation. There is another example of this when the 5 men are brought into a line up by the NYPD because of a truck found full of stolen guns. It is merely an aid in getting them all together, but the primary focal point is the reason for these individual men being called at the same time, which may seem random at first but is actually very purposeful and hides behind a deeper