Chazz Palminteri

Re-watching the Classics: The Usual Suspects

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The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And like that, poof. He’s gone.

I can’t believe this film is 20 years old this year!  The Usual Suspects is one of the great modern neo-noir movies and launched the career of director Bryan Singer into the stratosphere.

This film is known for it’s all-star cast, and it is a great cast, but where they all-stars when this film was made?  Kevin Spacey was a great actor before this film, but wasn’t in much you would have heard of.  Though I loved Swimming with Sharks, most probably never heard of this film.  This film gave him an Oscar win and made him a big name in Hollywood.  Benicio Del Toro did some T.V. work and few movies before this as well, but as the scene stealing Fenster his star meter went up drastically.  Kevin Pollak was already a star as a stand up comedian, but this movie showed his dramatic side.  Pollak has worked steady ever since, bouncing from comedic to dramatic roles.  Alec’s little brother Stephen Baldwin was doing well and may have been considered a big star at the time.  His star power has dimmed in recent years, but he showed some great presence in this film.  Gabriel Byrne was probably the biggest draw for this film at the time of its release, and was excellent as always.  Chazz Palminteri plays his usual Italian tough guy from New York in this film and it fits perfectly.

Our story starts out with our Usual Suspects all getting arrested in connection to a load of gun parts being hijacked.  They quickly become good friends and team up together on some more heists.  The whole story is told in flashback fashion from Kevin Spacey’s character Verbal being interrogated in a police station in Los Angels.  Our plot thickens as new evidence becomes available and they ask Verbal more questions on what happened.  As the audience we want to know the answers as much as the police do.  What is going on?  What was really on the boat?  Who got away alive?  and of course Who is Keyser Söze?

I’m not going to lie, I love Singer’s X-men films, but what would really make me happy is if he made another neo noir film.  This is a film you can watch over and over again and find little hints and clues to one of the greatest mysteries in movie history.

Favorite Tidbit: **semi-spoiler alert**  As this film was being made, all the actors were told “they are Keyser Söze.”  None of them learned the truth until the first screening of the movie.

Review: Mulholland Falls

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Mulholland Falls has one of the greatest casts from the 90’s, and all neo-noir favorites.  We got Nick Nolte at the height of his cool, Melanie Griffith as the clueless wife, Jennifer Connelly who just looks like she was made to play the femme fatale in the 1950’s, Chazz Palminteri who fits in the 1950’s just as well as anybody, and what kind of neo-noir film made in the 1990’s would be complete without Michael Madsen.  The stars go on and on including John Malkovich playing the focus of our heroes investigation and Andrew McCarthy as the openly gay photographer that may have more on his film then he wanted. The story comes from Peter Dexter who has written some well received crime novels and has one the National Book Award.  This movie goes back to one of the greatest noir stomping grounds ever,1950’s Los Angles.  We get gangsters, a murder mystery, adult movies(back when they where highly illegal) and powerful men that think they can get away with anything. This movie definitely got it’s inspiration from the “Hat Squad,” a team of detectives that were given free rein to do what they needed to keep the Mafia out of L.A..  We see the “Hat Squad” again, in 2013’s Gangster Squad and TNT’s Mob City.  Maybe it was a little bit of a let down, with a cast like this we were expecting something similar to what we got the next year with L.A. Confidential(we will definitely be looking at this amazing film in a future post) but it’s not fair to compare these two films.  Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5 stars out of 4, so he saw this as a good film that could have been great.  This is a fun neo-noir to watch if you haven’t seen it yet or would like to give it another chance I would like to here your opinion.