‘The Usual Suspects’ explained: Who is Keyser Söze?
The 1995 Bryan Singer film The Usual Suspects brought neo-noir crime movies into the mainstream just as the genre was beginning to gain traction among a group of pioneering independent filmmakers. Following hot on the heels of Palme d’Or winner Pulp Fiction, the movie put suspenseful crime thrillers back on the cinematic map.
Not everyone was so taken with Singer’s movie, though. Among the doubters was film critic Roger Ebert, who initially claimed not to understand the plot before deciding there wasn’t all that much to understand. And Ebert wasn’t the only one thrown by the film’s sharp, somersaulting turn of a climax. It left many people grasping for answers as to why things happened the way they did earlier in the plot.
Because they were all just the tall tales of one man sitting in a police interrogation room, is that it? The ending might seem like a cop-out (pun intended) to some. But its purpose is clearly less about maintaining the suspension of our disbelief than shattering the suspense that the film had built up so effectively into tiny fragments of Kobayashi crockery. Certainly, the twist follows Alfred Hitchcock’s number one rule of film noir: never be boring.
Agent Dave Kujan drops his mug of coffee in horror, realising that the man he’s just let go is the one he was looking for all along. Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint, an ostensibly naive and disabled petty criminal played by Kevin Spacey, has walked out the door and, to quote Verbal himself, “Like that, he’s gone.”
The least suspicious member of the original police line-up at the beginning of the movie’s flashback narrative turns out to be the one behind it all. The only one left alive, and, as is revealed to us in the closing moments, not actually unwitting or disabled at all.
Kujan stares into the LAPD noticeboard that Verbal faced when he was interrogated and pieces together the details of the story he’s just been told. He spots the name “Redfoot”, for example, who was the jewellery fence Verbal claimed his group had met in California. And the word “Guatemala”, where Verbal said he had been part of the coffee trade.
But where on the board is Keyser Söze? The Turkish crime lord who was supposedly the architect of the entire case is nowhere to be found in this jigsaw puzzle of lies.
Is Keyser Söze real?
Arkosh Kovash, the Hungarian gang member who survived the shootout on a cargo ship from which Verbal was also rescued, repeats the words “Keyser Söze” from his hospital bed completely independently of Verbal. In fact, Verbal is only forced to discuss Söze when Kovash’s words are put to him.
What’s more, right at the start of the film, before prime suspect Keaton is shot by a figure whose face we never see, he refers to him as “Keyser”.
This chronology of events outside of Verbal’s own storytelling demonstrates to us that Söze really does exist in one form or another. Verbal himself is visibly angry when Agent Kujan first asks him, “Who’s Keyser Söze?” Contrary to everything else he is telling the police, he doesn’t want them to know about Söze.
Why? Because unlike everyone else, Verbal mentions outside of the criminals the police are already aware of, Söze is real. More specifically, Söze and Verbal are one and the same person. To confirm this fact, an artist’s rendering of Kovash’s physical description of Söze arrives at the police station via fax at the end of the movie, matching Verbal’s likeness.
Did Verbal really commit the horror stories he told Kujan about Keyser Söze himself? Unlikely. But these exaggerated tales were told to portray Söze as a mythical figure, forcing both Kujan and us to doubt his existence altogether. As Verbal says prophetically, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
In this way, he can better conceal his real identity, and Singer’s movie can blindside us all the more with its ending.
