Roll Credits: 13 Brilliant Movie Endings

7) The Usual Suspects (1995)

Any list that covers remarkable movie endings is always going to have to bring in The Usual Suspects. It rivals and probably surpasses The Sixth Sense for shock-reveal factor and, also like The Sixth Sense, ranks among those few movies in cinematic history that people no longer have to watch in order to know what happens. But it is still worth revisiting this most astounding sequence, that left jaws around the world a good six feet away from their owner’s faces.

Kevin Spacey plays Roger “Verbal” Kint, a small-time criminal with a cowering, pathetic manner and a crippled hand and leg. Following an enormous explosion on a ship in San Pedro Bay that also involved a vast shipment of cocaine and many deaths, FBI agent Jack Baer attempts to interview Verbal, who was one of only two survivors.

The movie follows Verbal’s account in flashback form, the story becoming increasingly convoluted. Integral to Verbal’s story is Dean Keaton, a reformed criminal who Verbal believes to be his friend, and the mysterious character of Keyser Söze, an enigmatic and highly dangerous man whose real identity is not known, and who is never seen by anyone who works for him.

It is the murderous reputation and violent threats of Söze that convinced the five men implicated in the cocaine deal/boat fire to take the job, their only communication with Söze coming in the form of Söze’s lawyer henchman, Kobayashi (Pete Posthlethwaite.) Almost everywhere they go, the men, including Verbal, encounter people who are aware of Söze, and his immense and dangerous power. Verbal tells Baer that while they were at the boat attempting to find the cocaine Söze had ordered them to destroy, the other men, including Keaton, were killed by who Verbal believes to be Söze himself, although Söze’s face is never actually seen.

Baer doesn’t believe Verbal’s story, and argues to Verbal that Keaton was in fact Keyser Söze, and that he had been betraying the stupid and weak Verbal all along. Verbal tearfully denies this, but insists on posting bail as he refuses to give any more information. He leaves Baer’s office still in tears, and limps uncomfortably away.

Then the fun begins. Sitting on his desk in his office, coffee in hand, Baer gives the impression of finally relaxing. He is idly looking over the littered noticeboard in front of him, which is a vast patchwork of notes, messages, photos, papers. Suddenly, he notices the words “Quartet, Il.”, and recalls Verbal telling him about when he was in a barbershop quartet in Illinois.

As his eye begins to scan the notice board with rising panic, he sees more and more pieces of information that correlate exactly with the details of Verbal’s story – and realizes that Verbal fabricated almost the entire thing, from a random collection of ideas that were right in front of him. The shot cuts back to Verbal, limping down the street, a rapid series of sound bites from throughout the film playing over the scene as the audience – and Baer – realise that Verbal Kint in fact, is Keyser Söze.

The camera tracks Verbal’s awkward gait, which gradually straightens out until he is walking normally. He strides confidently down the street, lights a cigarette, and steps into a waiting car driven by Kobayashi. Baer reaches the street corner, but as Kint’s/Söze’s final words confirm – “just like that, he’s gone.”

We could struggle endlessly for a journalistically proper way to describe this ending, but most of us have things to do with our lives, so the following will have to do: It is, quite simply, just so smack-your-palm-on-the-table-damn-clever. Some actors who were approached by director Bryan Singer when he was casting the movie reportedly turned it down because they didn’t believe Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie could make this work – which is an understandable reaction: The complexity of the plotline looks ridiculous on paper. But onscreen, once we have seen the big reveal, the entire thing is actually unbelievably simple.