Why is it difficult to understand Benicio del Toro in ‘The Usual Suspects’?
Up until the release of The Usual Suspects, the highest-profile part of Benicio del Toro‘s Hollywood career had come in just his second-ever appearance in a feature film, when he played henchman Dario in James Bond sequel Licence to Kill.
No offence to anyone willing to die on the hill that it was his debut as Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in the sequel to Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, but antagonising one of cinema’s most iconic characters is a much bigger deal for any young actor.
Even though he’s incredibly difficult to decipher in Bryan Singer’s twisting crime thriller, the part of Fred Fenster was so uniquely bizarre that it opened up countless new doors for del Toro. The film recouped its budget ten times over at the box office, won both of the Academy Awards it was nominated for, and secured a spot in history for its game-changing twist, but the garbled supporting player always knew he was merely a cog in the machine.
Fenster ends up being shot in the head long before Keyser Söze’s true identity is revealed, which encouraged del Toro to make his accent as far-fetched as possible. There really was a method to his madness, which in turn allowed him to steal several scenes despite the majority of audience members having no clue what the hell he was even saying.
However, del Toro didn’t just spout nonsense or mutter unrelated asides, revealing on an appearance on Inside the Actors Studio that he recited every line of his character’s dialogue verbatim so that he wasn’t undercutting Christopher McQuarrie’s razor-sharp screenplay or going into business for himself.
“I read the script and I realized that the purpose of the character was that he was the first one to die. So then, every line that he said didn’t really affect the plot,” he explained. “So I sat down with Bryan Singer and I said, ‘It really doesn’t matter what this guys says. And if you allow me to, I think that we should allow me to do something with it’. And he said, ‘Go ahead.'”
It’s regularly incomprehensible, but del Toro made a point of noting how “I say every line, I say every line that was written,” despite doing so in a highly unusual manner. The dialect itself wasn’t made up on the fly, either, with the future Oscar winner sharing that because “Fenster is a German last name which means ‘window,'” he’d decided to play him as being half-German and half-Chinese, but raised in Harlem.
Del Toro signed onto The Usual Suspects knowing fine well that he’d be the first member of the ensemble to be bumped off, but instead of going through the motions, he consulted with the director and was given the leeway to make the mumbling criminal a memorable figure.
