Keyser Söze is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. According to the main protagonist, petty con artist Roger "Verbal" Kint, Söze is a crime lord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a mythical status among police and criminals alike. Further events in the story make these accounts unreliable; in a plot twist, a police sketch identifies Kint and Söze as one and the same. The character was inspired by real-life murderer John List, and by the spy thriller No Way Out, which featu
Keyser Söze is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. According to the main protagonist, petty con artist Roger "Verbal" Kint, Söze is a crime lord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a mythical status among police and criminals alike. Further events in the story make these accounts unreliable; in a plot twist, a police sketch identifies Kint and Söze as one and the same. The character was inspired by real-life murderer John List, and by the spy thriller No Way Out, which featu
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Keyser Söze ( KY-zər SOH-zay) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. According to the main protagonist, petty con artist Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), Söze is a crime lord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a mythical status among police and criminals alike. Further events in the story make these accounts unreliable; in a plot twist, a police sketch identifies Kint and Söze as one and the same. The character was inspired by real-life murderer John List, and by the spy thriller No Way Out, which features a shadowy KGB mole who may or may not actually exist.
The character has placed on numerous "best villain" lists over the years, including AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains. Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, turning him from a character actor into a star. Since the release of the film, the character has become synonymous with infamous criminals. Analysis of the character has focused on the ambiguity of his true identity and whether he even exists inside the story's reality. Though the filmmakers have preferred to leave the character's nature to viewer interpretation, Singer has said he believes Kint and Söze are the same person.
Concept and creation
Director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie originally conceived of The Usual Suspects as five felons meeting in a police line-up. Eventually, a powerful underworld figure responsible for their meeting was added to the plot. McQuarrie combined this plot with another idea of his based on the true story of John List, who murdered his family and started a new life. The name was based on one of McQuarrie's supervisors during his time as a copywriter at the firm Richards, Watson, and Gershon, though the last name was changed as the namesake did not want to be associated with a villain. McQuarrie settled on Söze after finding it in a Turkish-language dictionary; it comes from the idiom söze boğmak, which means "to talk unnecessarily too much and cause confusion" (literally: to drown in words).
Keyser Söze's semi-mythical nature was inspired by Yuri, a rumored KGB mole whose existence nobody can confirm, from the spy thriller No Way Out. Kint was not originally written to be as obviously intelligent; in the script, he was, according to McQuarrie, "presented as a dummy". Spacey and Singer had previously met at a screening for Singer's film Public Access. Spacey requested a role in Singer's next film, and McQuarrie wrote the role of Kint specifically for him. McQuarrie said he wanted audiences to dismiss Kint as a minor character, as Spacey was not yet well-known. Spacey made it more obvious that the character is holding back information, though the depth of his involvement and nature of his secrets remain unrevealed. McQuarrie said that he approved of the changes, as it makes the character "more fascinating".
The Usual Suspects consists mostly of flashbacks narrated by Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), a con artist with cerebral palsy. Kint was arrested after an apparent drug-related robbery gone wrong which resulted in the destruction of a freighter ship and the deaths of nearly everyone on board. He has been granted immunity from prosecution provided he assists investigators, including Customs Agent David Kujan (Chazz Palminteri), and reveals all details of his involvement with a group of career criminals who are assumed to be responsible for the bloodbath. While Kint is telling his story, Kujan learns the name Keyser Söze from FBI agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) and orders Kint to tell him what he knows.
Kint states that Söze was believed to be of Turkish origin, but some have said that he was half German through his father.
According to Kint, Söze began his criminal career as a small-time drug dealer. Horrifically though, one afternoon while Söze is away from home, rival Hungarian gangsters attempt to intimidate him by taking his family hostage and raping his wife, then, when he returns home, slitting the throat of one of his children right before his eyes. Determined to show these "men of will" what will really was, Söze shoots and kills his own family and all but one of the Hungarians, letting the last leave so he can tell his cohorts what happened. Once his family is buried, Söze massacres the Hungarian Mafia, their families, their friends, and even people who owe them money. He goes underground, never again doing business in person, operating instead through oblivious underlings.
Söze's ruthlessness is legendary; Kint describes him as having had enemies and henchmen brutally murdered, along with everyone they hold dear, for the slightest infractions. Over the years, his criminal empire flourishes, as does his legend. Remarking on Söze's mythical nature, Kint says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist", a line borrowed from Charles Baudelaire.
In Kint's story, he and several other criminals meet after being jailed on a trumped-up hijacking charge and work together as thieves for hire. After a botched robbery, they are blackmailed by Söze, through Söze's lawyer Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), into destroying a rival Argentinean gang's $91-million drug shipment. All but Kint and a Hungarian, Arkash Kovash (Morgan Hunter), are killed in the attack. However, as no drugs were ever found at the scene, Baer and Kujan believe the true purpose of the attack was to eliminate an informant on the ship named Arturo Marquez, a fugitive whom the Argentineans were attempting to sell to Hungarian mobsters. Marquez, had he survived, was one of the exceedingly rare people who could have positively identified Söze, having actually seen his face.
Kujan confronts Kint with the theory that Söze is corrupt ex-police officer Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), one of the criminals involved. Kujan's investigation of Keaton, which had been ongoing for three years, is what had involved
