Usual Suspects, The (DVD)

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Everything in Hollywood owes a little something to "Casablanca," as in the famous line, "Round up the usual suspects" and after the popularity of "Pulp Fiction," maybe Hollywood owes a little something to that film, too. Indeed, "The Usual Suspects" owes a bit of something to a whole lot of Hollywood pop culture.

The greatest merit of this 1995 motion picture from director Bryan Singer and scriptwriter Christopher McQuarrie (whose screenplay won him an Academy Award) is that, like "Casablanca" and "Pulp Fiction," it can be viewed more than once with new eyes. It can be seen as (a) a violent, complicated, and entertaining crime drama (b) an intricately conceived puzzle play (c) a fragment of gangster mythology or criminal folklore (d) a parody of cops-and-robbers films (e) an outright black comedy or (f) all of the above. And it entirely hinges on a viewer´s interpretation of the story´s ending. DVD is the perfect medium for repeat viewings of such Byzantine subject matter, and this splendidly remastered MGM Special Edition comes with enough extra material to keep one occupied for days.

The movie begins with a series of deaths and an explosion aboard a ship anchored in San Pedro harbor in Southern California. Then the scene shifts to a police lineup where five known felons have been brought in for questioning about an unrelated event. The story is narrated by one of the suspects, Verbal Kint, played by Kevin Spacey (an Oscar-winner for his performance), a crippled weasel of a man unable to use his left hand or foot, who is talking to a tough, smart customs official, Dave Kujan, played by Chazz Palminteri. Verbal Kint´s name says it all: He´s a talkative little gerbil and gimp. Trouble is, you can´t believe everything he says. That´s why watching the film several times over is both enlightening and fun. He tells us about the other characters in the lineup: the hotheaded McManus, played by Stephen Baldwin the cool, calculating Keaton, played by Gabriel Byrne the bizarre, mumbling Fenster, played by Benicio del Toro and the curious enigma, Hockney, played by Kevin Pollak. Verbal also narrates their exploits as a group after the police drill.

As Verbal´s story unfolds, we learn these suspects were not brought together by accident. They were, Verbal says, assembled for a specific purpose by a criminal mastermind, an Eastern European mobster named Keyser Soze, a kingpin of mythic proportions, a gangster every law enforcement officer in the world has heard of but nobody has ever seen, the very devil himself.

In fact, Verbal tells us, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn´t exist." Soze is a guy so treacherous, so ruthless, so powerful, and so mean ("How mean?") that when a rival gang threatens to kill every member of his family unless he turns over his territories to them, he kills his whole family himself, wife, kids and all, just to prove a point. Then he goes after and kills every member of the rival gang, and their families, and their parents, and their friends, and their friends´ friends, and anyone who owed them money! Now, that´s mean.

The story involves all of them in a complex plot that´s hard to follow the first time around, with killing and drug smuggling and scheming and double crossing. Admittedly, there is probably less to the plot than meets the eye when viewed a second time, although there are more to the surprises. And ever in the background hovers the spectre of Keyser Soze, along with his chief henchman, Mr. Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), who may or may not be Soze himself.

The cast is uniformly first-rate, the direction is tight, even when events skip all over the place in time and location, the tempo is brisk, and the writing is sharp and clever.

Video:
On this new Special Edition, the film is presented both in a fresh, high-definition widescreen transfer, a 2.17:1 ratio, and in a pan-and-scan format on the first side of the DVD. Since the widescreen version is close to the movie´s original theatrical-release size and since the pan-and-scan version cuts out about forty percent or more of the image, I advise, as usual, watching in widescreen. Picture clarity in the new mastering is better than ever (a comparison of bit rates between this edition and MGM´s earlier edition indicates the new version is higher), colors are brilliant and natural, and backgrounds are vibrant. There are, however, still a few nighttime shots where some minor blurring and fading continue to manifest themselves.