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Plot

A customs officer named David Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) is investigating a ship explosion at the San Pedro, California harbor. The person who ignited the fire killed the whole crew, as well as criminal Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), who was gunned down in the hold. Kujan interrogates the single survivor, the limping Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), a small-time thief, in the hopes of piecing together what happened.
Kint tells him about meeting some well-known criminals during an American-style confrontation required following the theft of a truckload of guns a few weeks before: fences Mc Manus (Stephen Baldwin) and Fenster (Benicio del Toro), explosives expert Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollack), and former corrupt cop Dean Keaton. During the discussion, Mc Manus proposes framing a bunch of corrupt cops involved in drug and emerald trafficking to get revenge and cause issues for the NYPD (who orchestrated the confrontation).
The robbery is successful, and the criminals arrive in California, where a fence will aid in the placement of the stolen emeralds; however, the group is approached with the opportunity to commit another robbery, this time against a jewelry dealer; the group agrees, but things do not go as planned, and three men are killed.
McManus then reveals that a lawyer, Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), who works for boss Keyser Söze, has given him information regarding the jobs to be carried out. The gang realizes they can't back down in the face of Söze's demands, and he eventually orders them to assassinate the crew of an enemy Argentinean trafficking ship, dispose of the drugs, and take the money; Kujan will have to retrace Kint's steps to figure out how things really happened.

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Why you should watch it?

• An Oscar-winning thriller: The Usual Suspects is a high point in director Bryan Singer's and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie's careers, with the latter winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this compelling script. Singer, for one, has a lot of fun with a clean and exciting action directing, in which even the most outrageous moments are somehow justified by the finale of the movie, which is one of the decade's most intriguing turning points.
  The Usual Suspects is compelling and unforgettable on the first viewing, but it takes on a new meaning on the second and subsequent viewings, when you can appreciate the interpretative and directorial nuances better. Spacey's performance as Verbal earned him his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, propelling him to international acclaim for his undoubted acting abilities. It's 1995, and Spacey has more than ten acting credits to his name, but it's with the role of swindler Verbal Kint that he finally manages to unleash his full ability and trace a path to success (or almost).

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• An amazing screenplay: An interlocking structure based on a clockwork screenplay that has been oiled down to its smallest gear in order to provide the highest level of mystery involvement within a mystery/detective story in which unexpected twists and betrayals are always around the corner, including a revelatory epilogue. The film's conclusion prompts a second viewing of the film in order to decipher the intricacies relating to the real sequence of events and Söze's phantom identity as an earthly devil who can change the fate of the characters at will. Bryan Singer exploits Christopher McQuarrie's informative writing with lucid cohesion and gives life to an organic mise-en-scene based on details and false leads. In a story that follows Verbal Kint, the gang's sole survivor, who begins telling his version of events during an informal interrogation from the very first minutes, alternating filmic present and flashback in a refined and balanced narrative dichotomy in which the deception is perpetrated through a deceiving realism that squeezes the viewer's acumen through dense dialogues in order to try to distinguish reality from lies.

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Conclusion

This is one of my favorite movies of all time, with probably the most unexpected finale I have ever seen. I clearly remember that after finishing the movie I was really excited and mind-blowed.
I strongly suggest to everyone to look at this movie at least once in their lives.

A fan fact about the movie is that the famous scene of the lineup (see the image below) should have been serious in the original idea of Singer, but since the actor continued to improvise and make "disturbing noises" he decided to keep the scence as it was. The other actors told that the main reason why they coudn't keep it togheter and remian serious, was that Benicio Del Toro was constantly farting during the scene 😂.

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Rating

9/10