Status Joe v. The Usual Suspects

Keyser Soze… Key-ser So-ze… Ranked as the 48^th best villain in AMC’s 100 best heroes and villains. He certainly is memorable, very memorable. I like the character. I like his lore. What I don’t like is how the entire movie is based around this devil, but does a terrible job building any sort of suspense. I hope that even a Keyser Soze appreciator like Bill Simmons can appreciate that while the mystique was well presented, the movie is horribly done and has very little kick in a moment when it was supposed to be a knockout punch.

Any movie that Stephen Baldwin acts well in is a movie that I put on my radar. And he really does a great job. The more I think about how great he did, the more my hairs start to rise and I wonder what con I’m falling into. It’s shifty and I don’t trust it.

Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint is a cool cat. I knew what he was hiding as soon as he compared his coffee to what it was like in Guatemala. The tell-tale about that little quip is that it was either witty fabrication or the truth. Both ruined the movie immediately, on the spot for me, I knew too much. If it’s a lie, then he said it very calmly and with intent, someone who knows more than he is letting on.. KEYSER SOZE! If he was telling the truth, then what the fuck was doing in Guatemala.. wait.. KEYSER SOZE!

Now you could argue that Kint actually got away on the boat and that he was being released in two hours because Soze knew where he was and wanted him delivered to him so he could swiftly be dealt with. Naw.. don’t buy it. Why would Soze waste resources getting the Governor on the phone to release him when he could have just let Kint stay in jail, and paid some inmate a pack of cigarettes to shank him? No.. none of it makes sense. The only person who could have had Kint out of there was Keyser Soze himself! Kint is Keyser Soze.. Keyser Soze is Kint.. I’m going to throw up. As soon as we heard about the devil Soze is, what he does, how he does it, you really think Kint slipped through his fingers on the boat? No.. that wouldn’t be like Soze, to mess up like that and leave loose ends. Unless Soze was…

Finally, the scene that completely ruined the movie for me… when the Turkish OG was telling the sketch artist what Keyser Soze looked like, but we didn’t see a finished work until the end. Now why did it take the whole movie to finish that sketch? I wonder. So that was it. “Game over, man!” They might as well have ended the movie right there. Mystery solved. The only point was finishing the movie, see some cool gunfights, I guess. Seriously, my 4-year-old brother has more surprises up his sleeve than this movie.