The (Un)usual Suspect

WARNING: THIS PIECE CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS ON THE 1995 FILM "THE USUAL SUSPECTS". I ADVISE YOU TO WATCH THE FILM BEFORE READING.

One of the definitive factors that influences my choices on Saturday movie night is looking at the poster and the Netflix description and figuring out through my pure intuition, what I think the plot twist might be, or if there is even a twist. However, not all of these twists are quite the gut-punching, satisfactory roller coaster they advertise themselves as. Some of them leave a bitter taste in your mouth, a blow of contrivance to your brain. If there were to be a perfect plot twist, there is one movie that stands above all other moments of plot twists in pop culture. It is the infamous ending of Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects. 

The Usual Suspects follows the interrogation of a crippled con artist in New York named Verbal Kint, who details a criminal operation on a boat that only left two alive, including himself. Verbal claims that urban legend and presumed crime lord, Keyser Soze, was the one who controlled him and four others: Fenster, MacManus, Hockney, and Keaton. He details his journey, from a meeting with a “fence” named Redfoot, an underling named Kobayashi working for Keyser Soze, and Soze’s promise to spare their lives if they destroy a shipment of cocaine and the gangs related to them on a boat. 

The twist? When Agent Kujan, the US Customs agent investigating the case, realizes the only man who recognizes Keyser Soze was killed on the boat, he becomes certain that Keaton, the most experienced member in the group and a former NYPD officer, was Keyser Soze. Verbal gives in and confesses with teary eyes that Keaton was the one who orchestrated the heist on the boat and manipulated the other four. Moments later, Kujan realizes that Verbal made up his story on the spot using pieces of information he found on a bulletin board: Kobayashi from the bottom of Kujan’s coffee cup, and Redfoot from a mugshot on the board in front of him. While Kujan rushes out to find him, Verbal slowly straightens his crippled foot, unclenches his crippled hand, and leaves in Kobayashi’s car, certifying that he was, in fact, Keyser Soze. Brilliant.

But what makes this final ten-minute segment so great?

First, the presumed truth makes sense and is plenty reasonable on its own. Five criminals start bonding after the NYPD falsely suspects them of being perpetrators of a truck heist, seeking revenge on the police officers who accused them. The five begin to work as a team, mostly stealing jewels with the help of a transporter named Redfoot. When one of these heists goes wrong, it is revealed that Kobayashi was the one who arranged its failure. Kobayashi, speaking on behalf of Keyser Soze, claims that all of them have stolen from him and threatens to kill them and their loved ones if they do not destroy the boat. Those alive after the mission will be given a sum of $91 million.

There are many reasons why we should believe Verbal’s story. According to his narrative, all five members have stolen from Soze in some way. We also witness the death of Fenster, who is found dead in a cave after he tries to escape from Kobayashi. Though the story is told discontinuously, there seems to be no noticeable error or trouble with continuity in how Verbal narrates the story. We can only assume that, as crime veterans in their own right, MacManus does have a connection with a fencer off the radar named Redfoot, and that Keyzer Soze sends dispatches or underlings such as Kobayashi to negotiate on his behalf. The story is not over the top, nor is the dialogue itself unnatural in any way. It flows like any other story.

There is also reason to believe that Keaton is the mastermind behind the operation and the identity behind Keyser Soze. From the inception of the team of usual suspects, Keaton becomes the dominating member of the group. Although he is not in the planning stage, he asserts himself as a good leader as well as a skilled tactician. From the way he treats and uses Verbal, such as asking him to accompany his visit to his girlfriend, Edie Finneran, Verbal seems like a pawn to Keaton. Keaton is the first to know there is no cocaine on the boat, and the last to be “killed”, after the deaths of Hockney and MacManus. 

The beauty of the presumed truth in this film is also supported by the fact that the interests of Agent Kujan and the gang do not align. While the members of the gang simply choose to board the boat out of survival and profit, the NYPD also runs a joint investigation on who Keyser Soze actually is. We, as the audience, are forced to follow both, heightening the significance of this presumed truth.  

Second, yet less importantly, the plot twist does not operate for the sake of the exposition or presumed truth. Although some twists tend to convolute or degrade the efforts of the characters done previously through a massive yet simple twist, The Usual Suspects expertly ties the narrative together. We see how Verbal improvised the story, as well as the reasoning behind his facade as a cripple, choosing to be weak while incriminating a friend.

But perhaps the most important element of the twist is its execution. Unlike most movies, where the twist is revealed towards the end, and there is about half an hour more screen time where the twist produces new action, The Usual Suspects ends on a high note when Verbal is revealed to be Keyser Soze all along. The buildup to the reveal is also done expertly. It starts with Kujan, proudly yet absent-mindedly looking at the bulletin board. Then he starts seeing elements of Verbal’s story unfold in front of his eyes. Bricks Marlin from the fish that Rabin, the owner of the office, caught. The barbershop quartet from a metal plate in the left corner. The Guatemala story from a large coffee poster. And finally, the name Kobayashi, coming from the coffee cup that has been hovering over his head for hours. Then, there is a short montage, with a shot of Verbal as Soze that only appears for a split second. The deaths of Hockney, MacManus, and Keaton soon follow. Then, a faxed drawing from a witness at the hospital that looks oddly like Verbal. And then there’s the infamous scene with his feet, which completes the movie. 

It’s short and sweet, but it also takes its time. The scene does not immediately start with the faxed drawing of Verbal, but instead focuses on Kujan’s hubris and his fallacy of having completed the mission when it is far from over. Although abrupt and having no advancement of plot afterwards, this serves as a better ending to the film itself, considering the attention the name Keyser Soze has gotten until this point.

It's simple, yet effective. And in my mind, no twist will ever be better than this one. 

“Sorry, I Don’t Really Get Grateful Dead.”

When I was ten years old, all I had in my head were the songs I wished I could play on the guitar, and songs I knew I couldn’t play on the guitar. Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, and Metallica’s songs were most of the songs I was getting my hands on at the time, and I was confident that I would learn the weird natural harmonic on You Give Love a Bad Name, the legatos on Layla, and the fast downpicking on Master of Puppets with just a little bit of practice. And then there were Pink Floyd songs: songs I knew, even if I created a group of musicians of the highest caliber, we would still be unable to play them because of their technicality, experimental, and mysterious sound. Pink Floyd presented itself to me as innovators of sound rather than music, however. Now, the first band that I think of when someone asks me, “What is your favorite band?” still remains to be Pink Floyd, but it hit harder as a ten-year-old. The sounds that Floyd’s guitarist David Gilmour could create from just ten fingers still blow my mind to this day, but as a beginner guitarist, this feat seemed impossible. 

One day in the car ride to school, my mother showed me a band that, according to her ears, sounded just like Pink Floyd. I listened intently, expecting a wave of familiarity and beautiful orchestration. Instead, I was hit with, at least what I could feel with my ten-year-old ears, a group of thoughtless people making sporadic, toy-like noises which were barely loud enough to hear. This group of people was called Dead & Company. 

I was irritated because it was nothing like Pink Floyd. It had none of the grandeur, sophistication, and rhythmical complexity that they provided. Instead, it sounded like generic country music trying to make a name for itself with a piano and three guitars. And plus, the song was 15 minutes long. 15 minutes of dragging, sleepy, and boring music. Now, at this point in my musical journey, I was acquainted with jam tracks and the music of the American South, but 15 minutes of the same old tune seemed off to me. 

I was so irritated, in fact, that I felt that a Google search was necessary to look into what these people were thinking. The band Dead & Company was composed of six people: John Mayer, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Oteil Burbridge, and Jeff Chimenti. The latter five members of the group were part of a retired rock band called Grateful Dead, which had been active since 1965, all the way to 2015. As the fifteen-minute track came to an end, so did my car ride. I stepped away from the car, and Dead and Company no longer occupied any space in my head. I was thinking more about the other, better songs I could have listened to on my way to school. 

As the years went by, so did my journey in music. As I grew more skilled at the guitar, I found that improvisation, rather than perfect semitone bends and fast playing, was interesting to me. So, the songs I was learning gradually shifted from hard rock and metal to blues. I was learning the minor pentatonic scale (see Week 2 for more details) and how to articulate my notes with “the blues feel”, just like my idols had done on my favorite records. I hoped to be at a stage where I would just jump into a solo without knowing how to start or stop, and get even more applause than I would jumping into a planned solo. But starting out, my soloing skills were limited to what my idols had already played. I would still look and sound cool, but I had no originality whatsoever. And when I tried to compose a solo myself, my sonic range was confined by the only pentatonic box I knew (again, check Week 2 for more details), making my lines sound repetitive and redundant. As I began to listen to more and more blues, I began to realize something that did not sit right with me, regardless of my playing ability. It was that when I began to dive deeper into one guitarist’s sound, I would just end up sounding like them. 

Although this would not be a problem for adults, as a child, my knowledge of music was still limited, and I was unable to digest multiple styles of music at the same time. Stevie Ray Vaughan was known for his fast and rhythmical licks, while B.B. King was known for making his guitar sound like a female singer’s voice. While I liked both guitarists very much, I could not balance their two sounds. These were two sounds of completely different eras and styles, and my child brain could not incorporate both into my playing that would truly sound like me. Thus began the “hopeless wanderer” era in my guitar playing journey: not knowing what to practice and dipping my fingers in and out of multiple artists’ playing across many different time periods of the blues. As I ventured through this period of purposeless exploration, I began to dream of a solution: if only there were a guitarist who could blend all of my favorite guitarists’ sounds together, that would satisfy my needs. And that person was John Mayer. 

I found out about John Mayer when I came across a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Bold as Love that he had done for his third album, Continuum. As I began listening to Continuum, a eureka moment lit up in my head. I had found a guitarist who had the furious playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the melodic phrasing of BB and Albert King, and the harmonic complexity of a Berklee student. His blues trio album, Try!, reinforced this idea for me, and I ended up playing a cover of his cover of Wait Until Tomorrow, a Jimi Hendrix song, at my school’s annual talent show just three days ago (May 7th, 2025). 

Unlike artists from the 70s and 80s who were pioneers in blues technique and had to open the gateway for new guitarists, being an artist from the 2000s, Mayer had already stepped into that gateway and had studied the guitarists of old along the way. By the time I had discovered him, he had cemented his legacy as a modern guitar hero. 

I was getting into Mayer’s music, and I loved playing John Mayer songs, but there was still a lingering doubt in my mind. Now I was deep into a Mayer rabbit hole, once again assimilated by the artist I loved copying. Regardless of how diverse its roots were, Mayer’s techniques placed a box around my playing, and my state of wandering slowly began again. 

But this time, I was certain that there was absolutely no way of solving this problem. Having played guitar for five years, I knew that if I began to step into the realm of one guitar player, I would inevitably be limited by their techniques and standards. And I knew parting from this was not easy. While I was doing some research, I came across a collaboration John Mayer had done with five other musicians: Dead and Company.

By the time I had discovered Dead and Company, I was unaware of the fact that I had encountered them once before. In a video I watched, they were performing at the Sphere in Los Angeles. Looking back, my mother was right. Dead and Company’s rich sound did remind me of Pink Floyd. And so did Grateful Dead. 

Grateful Dead was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. They were a leading musical group in the hippie movement, a counterculture faction that rejected mainstream values and norms and protested for more peace, love, and freedom. Grateful Dead, like Pink Floyd, is a psychedelic rock band, featuring many songs in their discography created through the effects of substances such as LSD. However, there is a different vibe to Grateful Dead. Unlike their popular association with hippies, they do not sound hippie or counterculture. In fact, I can’t get my finger on it. They sound like blues mixed with country, with a bit more fun. That is probably why their live shows are so accessible. About 2000 of their shows are recorded on tapes that Deadheads brought with them. 

Although there are more videos on Dead and Company’s performances, and John Mayer is a very accomplished guitarist, there is something about Jerry Garcia as a guitar player that surprises me every time I listen to him. Unlike most guitarists who treat a solo as a story, with ups and downs depending on the chord changes, Garcia treats his solos as bursts of energy. He rarely pauses in his playing and swims through the track. His will to improvise and to keep up with the song is constant. Although modern guitarists might criticize him for a lack of emphasis and prominence of the guitar, I think this is Garcia’s greatest asset. He does not overdo things. Instead, he makes room for the other instruments in the band to shine, creating a fuller and spacious sound. He focuses on vibe and ambience rather than placing the guitar at the forefront. But it is challenging. Some assume that his thin, somewhat wispy tone and playing style are simple and easy to replicate. I’ve tried to cover one of the Dead’s songs, and it is definitely a challenge playing continuously for 4 to 5 minutes at a time. It’s really hard. But the vibe of the band is relatable and attractive.

I am just starting to get into the “vibe” of Grateful Dead. I get the vibe, but I don’t get the band itself. It gets me thinking on my feet and formulating rough ideas about what they are all about. But as of right now, I still don’t get Grateful Dead music. I probably won’t for a while. 

Blues Music and Personalities

I listen to blues music the most often in the car. I’ve always found it to be relieving and exciting in the repetitiveness and linearity of the road. 

Some might think the blues is really easy to both define and learn as a musician. The blues, at its core, is about the struggle of African Americans in the United States, translated into music. When thinking about it musically, nearly all blues songs follow a standard “12 bar blues” progression, or in rather complex musical jargon, I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-IV-I-I. This means that if you know the chords, the key, and ways to work your instrument to bedazzle the crowd, you’ve mastered the blues. Even famed blues musician Albert King said, “The blues don’t change.” But I like to think differently about what the blues is really about. There is no definite way to play the genre. From the lyrics to how one plays a note on their instrument, how both the musicians and the audience understand the blues is as unique to them as a fingerprint. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_o6J6ZVpaA

The styles and personalities of the blues varied throughout history. The blues originated from the American South, where African Americans suffering from the Jim Crow laws and other sources of oppression sang about their troubles through hollering and simple tunes. The first blues musicians emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century around an area known as the Mississippi Delta. Most songs around this time period featured one singer and a single instrument, most often the guitar. Here, musicians such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Robert Johnson began popularizing the spirit of the blues. They sang about discrimination and how being “black” affected their lives for the worse. For example, in “Black, Brown, and White”, Big Bill Broonzy sings: “But as you black, oh brother, get back, get back, get back”, showing how the color of his skin limited him from, in this case, buying himself a drink. When African Americans moved to the cities for new jobs, the blues followed along with them. 

Blues music evolved and urbanized towards the early 1940s. Like jazz, blues music became electrified, with singers accompanying their vocals with the electric guitar. They also began performing alongside other instruments such as piano and percussion. In cities such as Chicago, Memphis, and New York, musicians began putting the blues on records from bigger labels. Unlike rural blues, urban blues was strongly focused on daily life and finding love in the city, and the concept of racial discrimination slowly disappeared from the lyrics as the blues became known to wider audiences apart from just African Americans. In the standard “Sweet Little Angel”, the singer compares his love to an “angel” and the joy she brings to his life. Urban blues influenced many artists across the globe, such as Eric Clapton, to cover American blues music, lighting the spark for what would be known as the British Invasion. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohwYVMqqf-I

But the uniqueness of blues music really comes down to the player, regardless of whatever sub-genre of the blues they might play. Blues music pushed players to discover new qualities and break new boundaries on their instruments. One of the instruments that has experienced the most breakthroughs throughout history is the electric guitar. As John Mayer puts it, “When it comes to blues guitar, every player bends a note differently. It is literally as unique as a fingerprint.” And he is true about this in many ways. 

To discuss the individuality of the blues guitar, we must carefully put on our “music nerd” hats and explore the aspect that brought all of these musicians together: the minor pentatonic scale. A scale is a series of notes that ascend in pitch, just like how the C Major Scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B) progresses in ascending order. Musicians often number the notes in a scale. In the C Major Scale, the C is “the 1” and the B is “the 7”. As the guitar is a multi-stringed instrument, these notes often repeat on different strings, creating a “box” or area around these clusters of similar notes. As this “cluster” moves along the neck, the shape slightly changes. The minor pentatonic scale consists of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th notes of any major scale, and is widely regarded as the key to improvising in blues guitar. In essence, it is a simple scale to master. However, many of the blues guitar’s pioneers left a distinctive mark on how guitarists play and understand this scale. 

Robert Johnson, a Delta blues guitarist, was the first to incorporate “blue notes” into his playing. “Blue notes” in musical terms are the flatted (b) 3rd and 7th notes of the minor pentatonic scale. They bring a sense of melancholy that a singer would often utilize to accentuate tension in his or her singing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYXolbCrr0

B.B. King, who debuted with the single “Miss Martha King” in 1949, showed a different understanding of the pentatonic scale through his playing. King was one of the first guitarists to play higher notes up the neck in intervals relative to the chord he was playing over. This new “box” was coined “The B.B. Box”. King also started integrating the major pentatonic scale in points in the progression to convey the introduction or the release of tension in his playing. One talent of King’s is the “butterfly vibrato”, or how he would imitate slide guitarists by fluttering his finger on the string to create a vibrato effect similar to violinists. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WydRZHhVb00

Albert King was another player who revolutionized how guitarists view the blues. Albert King stood at 6’4” and was left-handed. He was inspired by B.B King in many ways, naming his stage name “King” and naming his guitar “Lucy” (B.B King named his “Lucille”). King taught himself guitar on a right-handed model, which forced him to play upside down with the thinnest E string being closest to him. This heavily influenced his playing, as he could bend the E string down with gravity’s aid without much struggle. This, paired with his robust physique, created a powerful addition to the genre of blues guitar. As John Mayer said in Albert King’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “Albert King is the reason why guitar players break high E strings.” 

Every time my father or I turn up the volume on an old blues record, I always have two things on my mind: the fact that I might be one of, if not the only, 14-year-old blues enthusiast in my country, and how traditional yet unconventional the blues really is. In other genres of contemporary music, such as pop, for example, we rarely see artists constantly pay homage to their predecessors. In blues, that is the norm. When musicians play blues “standards”, what they do seem to be heavily inspired by past musicians, but they also seem to break from tradition and add their own style to the song. I think this is what the blues is all about; constantly exploring outside the box yet cherishing the oldies passed down from generations. I guess Albert King was right: “The blues don’t change.”