The Usual Suspects Ending, Explained (2024)

The Usual Suspects ending has gone down as one of the greatest twists in movie history and has added to the crime thriller's lasting legacy. The movie follows a group of criminals who work together on particular jobs, such as jewel heists and robberies, but their lives are put in grave danger when they're hired by the mysterious Keyser Söze. The job is a drugs raid on a docked ship, and Kobayashi, who is Söze's lawyer, blackmails the suspects into working the job based on all the times they've stolen from Söze.

The story is told from the perspective of Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), one of the suspects and the only surviving member following the botched raid. He is being interrogated by U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) in an office at a police station. The non-linear narrative of The Usual Suspects cuts between the intense interrogation and Verbal's very colorful version of what happened. However, the confusing movie only makes sense at the end, with the final reveal of The Usual Suspects being an iconic movie moment.

What Happens In The Usual Suspects' Ending

Verbal's Story Wasn't The Truth

Throughout The Usual Suspects, Verbal Kint, a motormouth with a limp, explains to Agent Kujan what happened on the boat, being specific about some details and vague about others. In Verbal's version of the story, Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), the ringleader of the suspects, angrily learns that there isn't any cocaine on the ship, let alone $91 million worth, leaving them to wonder why they're there.

Right before the ship gets blown to smithereens, the team becomes hunted by the phantom killer, Keyser Söze. The "suspects" get massacred by Söze in the shipyard. Verbal explains it was a setup and that Söze sent them there to die.

Agent Kujan concludes that Keaton is the real Keyser Söze and killed the team, and Verbal reluctantly agrees before limping away. In The Usual Suspects' final scene, a satisfied Kujan looks around the office after seemingly solving the case, until he realizes that everything that Verbal told him was a complete lie. News clippings on a corkboard and other items in the office share names from Verbal's story, showing that he made it all up right there in the room.

Meanwhile, Verbal collects a gold lighter and gold watch from the front desk, walks down the street, loses his limp, and gets into a car driven by the real "Kobayashi." Kujan chases after Verbal, but it's too late: he has completely vanished.

Verbal Kint Is Keyser Söze

Several Clues About Keyser Suggest His True Identity And Motives

While The Usual Suspects' twist ending is shocking, the movie left plenty of clues throughout as well as an explanation of why the crime lord took this approach to dealing with those who wronged him. Söze once murdered a group of Hungarian mobsters who'd held his family hostage, but he left one alive. He then massacred his own family and told the Hungarian to spread the word about what he was capable of.

Söze then only conducted business through subordinates who never really knew who they were working for. However, regardless of whether that urban legend is true, it explains Keyser's ruthless and calculating tactics. Verbal makes Kujan not only disregard him as being a mysterious crime lord, but the agent comes up with a whole other theory of his own. It's a masterclass in manipulation and deceit, something that audiences were told time and again throughout the movie that Keyser Söze is great at.

Once Verbal has left the building, a sketch of Keyser Söze is faxed to the police station. It's based on the description given by the one boat survivor questioned by FBI Agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito), and the police sketch looks exactly like Verbal. An earlier close-up of Söze's hands saw him using the gold lighter and gold watch, too. These details help make The Usual Suspects the kind of movie that rewards audiences for paying attention.

Why Verbal Killed Everyone On The Boat

The Suspects Were Never Meant To Survive

The Usual Suspects is full of intense action scenes, but the boat sequence builds the mystery to a boiling point. Though the gang was under the impression that they were to dispose of $91 million worth of cocaine to keep a Hungarian gang from competing with Keyser Söze's own drug empire, that wasn't the reason at all. Instead, though they didn't know it, Söze sent the gang to kill the one man who knew his true identity. The Hungarians brought the man along on the ship so that they could seek out the crime lord and kill him.

From the very beginning of The Usual Suspects, when Keaton memorably confronts Söze, the main characters were always expendable, with no real value or influence on the plot. However, Söze's plan didn't completely work, as one man who knew his identity survived, and that man shared Söze's identity with Agent Baer and the entire police force. Verbal was so hellbent on people not knowing his true identity that he caused millions of dollars worth of destruction and killed dozens of men.

The Real Meaning Of The Usual Suspects' Ending

The Mystery Movie Is Designed To Make Audiences Question Everything

The ending of The Usual Suspects makes viewers question what's real and what isn't, and even Gabriel Byrne thought Keaton was Keyser Söze during filming. Though the movie provides evidence of specific fabrications Verbal Kint told, it's far from clear how much of the rest of the story is true. The knowledge that some of the names that Verbal told Agent Kujan about aren't real therefore calls into question how genuine the other names are, or if the characters even existed at all.

Verbal is an unreliable narrator, and the only set-in-stone fact that is known about Keyser Söze is that Kobayashi exists. However, even then, his name isn't Kobayashi. Although the movie has a concise and clear ending, The Usual Suspects' message is that nothing is as it seems. As the Keyser Söze in the urban legend looks completely different from Verbal, the name could even be a pseudonym that's passed on.

Ultimately, the movie isn't about a group of eccentric con men, and it isn't about a drug war. It's a movie about a genius villain protagonist who hides in plain sight. It's about the extreme lengths he will go to so that the truth about him remains as murky as possible, even to the point where the audience doesn't have a clue. With the audience left in the dark for so long, it leaves an impact in the end when they learn that the bad guy gets away.

What Makes The Usual Suspects Ending So Iconic

The Audience Enjoys Being Fooled

There have been countless twist endings to movies over the years that only the truly special ones can stand out as effective conclusions. What makes The Usual Suspect's ending works so well is how it plays a trick on the audience. This can be a difficult thing to pull off as such an ending can lead to fans feeling like they simply wasted their time with the movie. The Usual Suspects makes it work because the rest of the movie is so strong and the audience is so gripped.

Had the movie ended with the reveal of Keaton beating Keyser Söze, The Usual Suspects would certainly not have been as popular of a movie, but it also wouldn't have been a bad one. It was a slick and exciting crime thriller up until the final moments with the audience not necessarily expecting anything more. However, the final moments brilliantly place the audience in the audience in the same position as Agent Kujan, slowly coming to the realization that they have been had.

Instead of being frustrating, it is an exhilarating moment for the audience, akin to seeing a magic trick being pulled off. The movie is also smart enough to avoid the twist being too obvious but also not making it a confusing reveal that comes out of nowhere. As soon as it becomes clear what is happening, viewers can immediately start piecing everything together and see how it all makes sense. While rewatching The Usual Suspects is a fun experience to see all the clues, the ending still lands with a great impact to close out the film.

What Critics Said About The Usual Suspects Ending

The Reception To The Twist Wasn't Always So Enthusiastic

The Usual Suspects earned two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Kevin Spacey) and Best Original Screenplay. Along with the lasting legacy as a beloved crime story, it would be expected that the movie was a huge hit with critics. However, there were some prominent critics at the time who took issue with the film and were particularly let down by the ending, which they felt was manipulative and rendered the movie inconsequential. Celebrated critic Roger Ebert gave the movie only one and a half stars out of four, saying (via RogerEbert.com):

“The story builds up to a blinding revelation, which shifts the nature of all that has gone before, and the surprise filled me not with delight but with the feeling that the writer, Christopher McQuarrie, and the director, Bryan Singer, would have been better off unraveling their carefully knit sleeve of fiction and just telling us a story about their characters – those that are real, in any event. I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation.”

Similarly, Tom Gliatto of People felt the movie's twist tricked the audience in a way that was not enjoyable and came off as deceptive for the sake of it:

"But Suspects’ surprises and twists all seem dizzyingly arbitrary because director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie resort to subtle tricks in narrative and point of view. A little red herring is one thing. But don’t smack me in the face with it, all right?"

While it seems as though the twist ending grew in popularity compared to how some initially accepted the conclusion, other critics felt the ending served the mystery well and separated The Usual Suspect from the typical genre fare. Washington Post critic Hal Hinson felt there were a lot of unanswered questions in the end, but felt that might have served the movie well:

“Ultimately, The Usual Suspects may be too clever for its own good. The twist at the end is a corker, but crucial questions remain unanswered. What’s interesting, though, is how little this intrudes on our enjoyment. After the movie you’re still trying to connect the dots and make it all fit — and these days, how often can we say that?”

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The Usual Suspects

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Written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer, The Usual Suspects is a Mystery film that features Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, and Benicio del Toro. The plot unfolds during an interrogation in which a con man speaks to investigators about what happened, being one of only two men that survived a massacre at the Port of Los Angeles.

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Director

Bryan Singer

Release Date

August 16, 1995

Cast

Kevin Spacey , Kevin Pollak , Benicio Del Toro , Gabriel Byrne , stephen baldwin , Chazz Palminteri

Runtime

106 minutes