02 May 2010

The full script for The Usual Suspects

There are so many classic scenes in the movie that it's hard to choose just one to embed. I'll opt for this one:
VERBAL (V.O.)
                He tells him he would rather see his
                family dead than live another day after
                this.
 
SOZE walks over to his wife, crying and beaten on the floor
    and holds up her head. She gives him the strangest look. One
    of trust perhaps, saturated with fear and humiliation.

    He puts the gun between her eyes and fires.

                             VERBAL (V.O.)
                He lets the last Hungarian go, and he
                goes running. He waits until his wife and
                kids are in the ground and he goes after
                the rest of the mob. He kills their kids,
                he kills their wives, he kills their
                parents and their parents' friends.

    A dark and looming figure of a man walks in front of a wall
    of fire - a black shadow blurred by waves of heat.

                             VERBAL (V.O.)
                He burns down the houses they live in and
                the stores they work in, he kills people
                that owe them money. And like that he was
                gone. Underground. No one has ever seen
                him again. He becomes a myth, a spook
                story that criminals tell their kids at
                night. If you rat on your pop, Keyser
                Sate will get you. And nobody really ever
                believes.

The full text is here.

Those interested in the film should also read this old post re disagreement as to whether Verbal Kint is or is not Keyser Sose.

1 comment:

  1. As I recall, as Spacey was walking out of police headquarters, there was a hotdog vendor selling sausages on a kaiser ("Get your sausage on a kaiser"). I just took it as he made up Keyser Sause from the whole cloth (Verbal too) - but that he was the criminal genius and did end up with whatever was on that boat and didn't have to split it with any of his colleagues. The story of the director and writer disagreeing about what the movie was about sounds like typical Hollywood malarky. The burned guy muttering about Kaiser Sause is just a hole in the plot.

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