Trailer
Plot summary
Roger "Verbal" Kint, a small-time con artist, is questioned in Los Angeles by customs agent Dave Kujan after an explosion and fire aboard a ship in San Pedro Bay leave few survivors. Kint describes how he met Dean Keaton, a former crooked cop now trying to go straight, and the criminals Michael McManus, Fred Fenster and Todd Hockney in a New York police lineup. The five rob a jewel smuggler and leave the city for California. There a lawyer called Kobayashi tells them they have stolen from Keyser Söze, a hidden Turkish crime lord, and that he demands they carry out a job for him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Usual Suspects (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Casting Dave Kujan took three tries: Bryan Singer wanted Chazz Palminteri but he was unavailable, so the part went out to Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, who both turned it down, and Al Pacino read for it and passed because he had just played a cop in Heat, a decision he later called the role he most regretted refusing.
- Gabriel Byrne first turned down Dean Keaton after reading the script because he thought the filmmakers could not pull off the story, and even after meeting Christopher McQuarrie and Bryan Singer he still backed out for 24 hours until they agreed to shoot in Los Angeles, where he lived, and finish the film in five weeks.
- Keyser Soze is modeled on real killer John List, a New Jersey accountant who murdered his family in 1971, then vanished under a new identity for almost two decades before he was finally caught.
- Writer Christopher McQuarrie took the name Keyser Soze from a former boss, Kayser Sume, at a Los Angeles law firm, changing the surname so his old boss would not object, and found the word "soze" itself in his roommate's English-to-Turkish dictionary, where it translates as "talk too much."
- The emeralds the crooks steal in the jewel-heist scene were not props: they were real gemstones borrowed for the shoot.
- A stunt went wrong in the Redfoot scene: the actor playing Redfoot was supposed to flick a cigarette at Michael McManus's chest but missed and hit Stephen Baldwin in the face instead, and Baldwin's startled reaction on screen is real, not acted.
