This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995). I watched the film for the first time over 8 years ago when I first started getting into watching films as a hobby, of course picking to watch it because it was in many films of ‘must watch movies’. One of the key attributes that I see as making a film part of these lists and how The Usual Suspects manages this is that it manages to capture a time and a place, but also have the retrospective appeal that still makes it relevant to audiences today.

This film achieves this timeless classic in the way it mixes genres, along with time and place. At times it conveys the classic noir film where you follow the journey of the narrator to uncover a criminal case where the victim is not yet known. It also manages to become a heist film as the concept for the final part of the film unfolds. But most importantly it is a well-worked thriller during the scenes that create suspense, creating a refreshing break from the long scenes of dialogue. If a film copies this today it will of course not have the same appeal. The reason it worked so well for this film was because how unique it was at the time. The twist could in the modern age be seen from a mile off, but the use of untrustworthy narrator or time-shifting narrative is something that was fresh for the Hollywood blockbuster.

My favourite part of the film is an edit at the start where one of the suspects throws a towel at the camera which also coincides with the end of scene and an edit away to another character. This to me indicates from early on that it is these suspects are in charge of the narrative shown on screen, not the audience, officers or even it feels like the production team. This becomes the truth by the end of the film where one of the suspects own made up narrative is what creates the story we have seen throughout, thereby determining the narrative we have seen for the last couple of hours.