'The Usual Suspects' is director Bryan Singer’s scorchingly, wickedly entertaining film noir about jewelry heists, drug deals, dirty cops, double-crosses, interrogations, paybacks, shifting loyalties, a handful of distrustful thieves, an impetuous fed, and one vindictive overlord.
Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio de Toro, Kevin Pollak and Kevin Spacey (in an Oscar®-winning turn for Best Supporting Actor) play five small-time hoods who are tossed into a scheme devised by drug overlord Keyser Soze—a criminal mastermind so notorious and so omnipotent that the very mention of his name strikes trembling fear into the hearts of crooks all around the world. Chazz Palminteri is thrown into the mix as a frustrated customs agent hot on the trail.
Not since 'The Crying Game' has a movie’s "big twist" been so closely guarded and embraced by critics and audiences alike, and for the sake of those who have not yet seen this terrific thriller, I will not be the first to spoil the film’s ingenious ending here. So enough about the movie itself. Let’s talk about the laserdisc.
The film has been released on video and laserdisc by Polygram Home Video. As usual for Gramercy Pictures films that are released through Polygram Video, the Gramercy Pictures logo has been deleted from the head of the film (the worst example of this disturbing trend is Polygram’s release of 'Romeo is Bleeding', wherein not only the Gramercy logo is cut, but also the intro title music that formerly accompanied it).
The laserdisc offers a crisp and razor-sharp picture. The comparison to the full-frame videocassette is a real eye-opener: the Polygram Video cassette is dark, and both murky and blurry.
The letterboxing represents the theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, but 'The Usual Suspects' was not shot in Panavision—it was filmed in the flawed Super 35 format. For a more detailed description of the Super 35 format versus Panavision (and an in-depth explanation as to why I will always prefer Panavision over Super 35), please refer to my review of the 'Apollo 13' laserdisc.
Anyway, I dwell on the Super 35 topic because I was recently stunned when I read a review of the 'The Usual Suspects' laserdisc published in a well-known and widely-read laserdisc publication. It read: "The disc has been letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, and it is impossible to imagine how the film’s signature scene, showing the five heroes in a police lineup, could be replicated without letterboxing." Well, I’ll tell you how: Super 35, that’s how. To properly assess a disc one must always do an actual tape-to-disc comparison before writing a review (as is my practice with ALL of my disc reviews). Had this critic done the same, he’d have discovered that this particular signature sequence was shot at a very narrow aspect ratio (probably very close to the TV ratio of 1.33:1), so that both the full-frame cassette and letterboxed disc versions reveal all five characters across within the same shot, without crops, pans or artificial edits.
Not all of 'The Usual Suspects' was shot in a 1.33:1 ratio. Most of the film was apparently shot in a slightly wider ratio (probably about 1.85:1), and the letterboxing reveals more picture information on the sides of the image, while blocking-out extraneous visual garbage at the bottom of the frame. For the most part, a common "top line" is maintained. Several sequences throughout the full-frame cassette illustrate a varying degree of panning-and-scanning, because some cassette sequences are "blown up" and over-scanned. A good example is the brief scene after the opening marina fire, when Kevin Spacey addresses two law enforcement officials. When you compare the cassette to the disc, you notice how much more vertical AND horizontal information is revealed on the letterboxed disc. It is during moments like this that the disc really shines, offering a truer representation of how director Bryan Singer intended the film to be seen.
Polygram has also included a running audio commentary track by director Singer and Oscar®-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie. For the most part, the running commentary is fun and informative (as all audio tracks should be). Singer and McQuarrie discuss the origins of the project (would you believe it all began with just a concept for a poster?) and talk about what it’s like for rookie filmmakers to be at the helm of a healthy-budget, big-star Hollywood production. Highlights: Singer and McQuarrie gleefully point out the film’s many editing gaffes and plot holes, humorously conceding that they still have a lot to learn about making movies. How refreshing that a hot-shot filmmaker would admit that he doesn’t yet know it all.
This is Polygram’s first whack at a laserdisc audio commentary track, and for future reference, they should know that it’s not really necessary for one audio commentary track to take up both analog channels (the other analog track could have been used for an isolated musical score track, or even for the now-seemingly-ubiquitous AC-3 encoding). Another technical note: As the end credits of the film roll, the audio commentary track, after a long silence, becomes an ever-deepening multi-layer of voices upon voices. The aforementioned laserdisc publication called this an intentional gimmick, a confusing cacophony of tell-all anecdotes that, if sorted out, would reveal the plot’s secrets. I couldn’t discern one comment from another, thus, since there’s no difference or delineation between the hubbub on Analog Track 1 and Analog Track 2, I discount this as a major programming error. Had the two separate Analog tracks "broken down" the layer-upon-layer barrage of indecipherable comments, perhaps I’d agree that this was an intentional gimmick, one that mirror’s the film’s multi-layered screenplay. As it stands, it’s a distracting conclusion to an otherwise superb laserdisc program.
Vital statistics: Polygram Home Video; 2 sides; CLV; Widescreen (Super 35, 2.35:1); Stereo Surround; Chapter Stops; $39.95.
S. Damien Segal.
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