Keyser Söze
Encyclopedia
Keyser Söze is a fictional character
in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects
, written by Christopher McQuarrie
and directed by Bryan Singer
. According to Roger "Verbal" Kint, Söze is a crimelord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a legendary, even mythical, status among police and criminals. The character was named the #48 villain in the American Film Institute
's "AFI's 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains" in June 2003.
), Söze was once a petty drug dealer beginning his criminal career in his native Turkey
. The entity that is Keyser Söze is born when rival Hungarian smugglers invade his house while he is away, rape his wife and hold his children hostage; when Söze arrives, they kill one of the children to show him their resolve, then threaten to kill his wife and remaining children if he does not surrender his business to them. Rather than give in to their demands and to spare his family from having to live with the memory of what has happened, he murders them and all but one of the Hungarians, knowing that the survivor would tell the mafia what has happened.
Söze goes after the mob, killing dozens of people including the mobsters' families, friends and even people who owe them money as well as destroying their homes and businesses. He then goes "underground", never again doing business in person and remaining invisible even to his henchmen, who almost never know for whom they are working. One of the most famous lines from the movie, spoken by Kint, is: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." This is a paraphrase of a phrase in a story by Charles Baudelaire
, as translated from the original French. Neither McQuarrie nor Singer realized this at the time and they "borrowed it from people who were quoting Baudelaire themselves."
Söze's ruthlessness is legendary; he is described as having had enemies and disloyal henchmen brutally murdered, along with everyone they hold dear, for the slightest infractions — and as having personally murdered people who have seen and can identify him. Over the years his criminal empire, including the drug trade
and the smuggling of weapons and materials flourishes as does his legend; he becomes, as Kint says during his interrogation, "a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night."
), ostensibly a con artist with cerebral palsy
. Verbal 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 notorious criminals that are assumed to be responsible for the destruction of a ship and the murder of nearly everyone aboard.
While Verbal is telling his story, Kujan learns the name Keyser Söze from FBI agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito
) and demands Verbal tell him what he knows. Verbal describes how he and a small group of career criminals are blackmail
ed by Söze, through Söze's lawyer Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite
), into destroying a large drug shipment belonging to Söze's Argentinian rivals. All but Kint and a Hungarian are killed in the attack. Baer believes there were no drugs and the true purpose of the attack was to eliminate a passenger on the ship who could identify Söze. Kujan confronts Kint with the theory that Söze is one of the criminals that Verbal had worked with: a corrupt former police officer and professional thief named Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne
). Kujan's investigation of Keaton is what involved him in the case.
In the final sequence of the movie, it is revealed that Verbal's story is a fabrication, made up of strung-together details culled from a crowded bulletin board
in the messy office of the police detective where Kujan conducted Verbal's interrogation. The methods used to persuade the audience of this included a buzzing montage of voices from the movie, cut and pasted with pictures and text from the bulletin board, as well as the "KOBAYASHI" manufacturer's logo printed on the bottom of Kujan's coffee cup. The surviving Hungarian, severely burned and in hospital, describes to a sketch artist a man he saw during the attack that he believes is Keyser Söze: none other than Verbal Kint. Kujan realizes the truth too late, as Verbal has already walked out on bail
, his limp suddenly gone. He uses a gold cigarette lighter similar to one Söze was seen carrying at the beginning of the film to light a cigarette with a steady hand and climbs into a car driven by the character we used to know as Kobayashi. As they drive away, Kujan desperately looks around the crowded streets for Verbal, having realized too late.
Since almost everything Roger "Verbal" Kint told during his interrogation is unreliable, Kint may be Söze or he could be Söze's agent or that Keyser Söze never existed, being a legend modified by Kint to deceive Kujan.
ic presence in The Usual Suspects. For example, in the video game Max Payne
, the titular character refers to Rico Muerte as "a regular Keyser Söze." In the video game Warcraft III, "KeyserSoze" is a cheat code that gives you a desired amount of gold.
The second use of the name in popular culture is a shorthand reference to being fooled, by an actual villain, into believing in a villain who does not exist. This use of the name is owed to the film's twist ending. One such reference can be found in "The Puppet Show
," an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where upon discovering the disappearance of a possessed dummy that had convinced the heroes it was on their side, Xander Harris
asks, "Does anyone else feel like they've been Keyser Sözed?"
In his 1999 review of Fight Club
, film critic Roger Ebert
commented, "A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Söze syndrome."
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects
The Usual Suspects
The Usual Suspects is a 1995 American neo-noir film written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Spacey and Pete Postlethwaite....
, written by Christopher McQuarrie
Christopher McQuarrie
Christopher McQuarrie is an American screenwriter, producer and director. His screenplays include The Usual Suspects, for which he won the 1996 Academy Award, The Way of the Gun and Valkyrie....
and directed by Bryan Singer
Bryan Singer
Bryan Singer is an American film director and film producer. Singer won critical acclaim for his work on The Usual Suspects, and is especially well-known among fans of the science fiction and superhero genres for his work on the X-Men films and Superman Returns.-Early life:Singer was born in New...
. According to Roger "Verbal" Kint, Söze is a crimelord whose ruthlessness and influence have acquired a legendary, even mythical, status among police and criminals. The character was named the #48 villain in the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's "AFI's 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains" in June 2003.
Background
According to "Verbal" Kint (Kevin SpaceyKevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...
), Söze was once a petty drug dealer beginning his criminal career in his native Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. The entity that is Keyser Söze is born when rival Hungarian smugglers invade his house while he is away, rape his wife and hold his children hostage; when Söze arrives, they kill one of the children to show him their resolve, then threaten to kill his wife and remaining children if he does not surrender his business to them. Rather than give in to their demands and to spare his family from having to live with the memory of what has happened, he murders them and all but one of the Hungarians, knowing that the survivor would tell the mafia what has happened.
Söze goes after the mob, killing dozens of people including the mobsters' families, friends and even people who owe them money as well as destroying their homes and businesses. He then goes "underground", never again doing business in person and remaining invisible even to his henchmen, who almost never know for whom they are working. One of the most famous lines from the movie, spoken by Kint, is: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." This is a paraphrase of a phrase in a story by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, as translated from the original French. Neither McQuarrie nor Singer realized this at the time and they "borrowed it from people who were quoting Baudelaire themselves."
Söze's ruthlessness is legendary; he is described as having had enemies and disloyal henchmen brutally murdered, along with everyone they hold dear, for the slightest infractions — and as having personally murdered people who have seen and can identify him. Over the years his criminal empire, including the drug trade
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
and the smuggling of weapons and materials flourishes as does his legend; he becomes, as Kint says during his interrogation, "a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night."
Film revelations
The film The Usual Suspects consists mostly of flashbacks narrated by Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin SpaceyKevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...
), ostensibly a con artist with cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive, non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development, chiefly in the various areas of body movement....
. Verbal has been granted immunity from prosecution provided he assists investigators, including Customs Agent David Kujan (Chazz Palminteri
Chazz Palminteri
Calogero Lorenzo "Chazz" Palminteri is an American actor and writer, best known for his performances in The Usual Suspects, A Bronx Tale, and his Academy Award nominated role for Best Supporting Actor in Bullets Over Broadway....
) and reveals all details of his involvement with a group of notorious criminals that are assumed to be responsible for the destruction of a ship and the murder of nearly everyone aboard.
While Verbal is telling his story, Kujan learns the name Keyser Söze from FBI agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito
Giancarlo Esposito
Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito is a Danish-born American film and television actor and director.-Early life:Esposito was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father and African-American mother. His mother was an opera and nightclub singer from Alabama, who once appeared on the same...
) and demands Verbal tell him what he knows. Verbal describes how he and a small group of career criminals are blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
ed by Söze, through Söze's lawyer Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite
Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE, was an English stage, film and television actor.After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr...
), into destroying a large drug shipment belonging to Söze's Argentinian rivals. All but Kint and a Hungarian are killed in the attack. Baer believes there were no drugs and the true purpose of the attack was to eliminate a passenger on the ship who could identify Söze. Kujan confronts Kint with the theory that Söze is one of the criminals that Verbal had worked with: a corrupt former police officer and professional thief named Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrne is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, writer, cultural ambassador and audiobook narrator. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined Londo's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's screen debut came in the Irish soap opera The Riordans and the...
). Kujan's investigation of Keaton is what involved him in the case.
In the final sequence of the movie, it is revealed that Verbal's story is a fabrication, made up of strung-together details culled from a crowded bulletin board
Bulletin board
A bulletin board is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise things to buy or sell, announce events, or provide information...
in the messy office of the police detective where Kujan conducted Verbal's interrogation. The methods used to persuade the audience of this included a buzzing montage of voices from the movie, cut and pasted with pictures and text from the bulletin board, as well as the "KOBAYASHI" manufacturer's logo printed on the bottom of Kujan's coffee cup. The surviving Hungarian, severely burned and in hospital, describes to a sketch artist a man he saw during the attack that he believes is Keyser Söze: none other than Verbal Kint. Kujan realizes the truth too late, as Verbal has already walked out on bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
, his limp suddenly gone. He uses a gold cigarette lighter similar to one Söze was seen carrying at the beginning of the film to light a cigarette with a steady hand and climbs into a car driven by the character we used to know as Kobayashi. As they drive away, Kujan desperately looks around the crowded streets for Verbal, having realized too late.
Since almost everything Roger "Verbal" Kint told during his interrogation is unreliable, Kint may be Söze or he could be Söze's agent or that Keyser Söze never existed, being a legend modified by Kint to deceive Kujan.
In popular culture
Since the release of the film, the name Keyser Söze has gained two popular uses in Western culture: the first is as a description of a legend, usually of underworld crime, which is a result of the character's SatanSatan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
ic presence in The Usual Suspects. For example, in the video game Max Payne
Max Payne
Max Payne is a BAFTA Award–winning third-person shooter video game developed by Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment and published by Gathering of Developers in July 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Ports created later in the year for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and the GameBoy Advance were published by...
, the titular character refers to Rico Muerte as "a regular Keyser Söze." In the video game Warcraft III, "KeyserSoze" is a cheat code that gives you a desired amount of gold.
The second use of the name in popular culture is a shorthand reference to being fooled, by an actual villain, into believing in a villain who does not exist. This use of the name is owed to the film's twist ending. One such reference can be found in "The Puppet Show
The Puppet Show
"The Puppet Show" is the ninth episode of season 1 of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode was written by story editors Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali, and directed by Ellen S. Pressman. The Scooby Gang becomes involved in the school talent show through the mechanations of new...
," an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where upon discovering the disappearance of a possessed dummy that had convinced the heroes it was on their side, Xander Harris
Xander Harris
Alexander LaVelle "Xander" Harris is a fictional character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as in numerous items in the series Expanded Universe, such as comic books, tie-in novels and video games...
asks, "Does anyone else feel like they've been Keyser Sözed?"
In his 1999 review of Fight Club
Fight Club (film)
Fight Club is a 1999 American film based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The film was directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays the unnamed protagonist, an "everyman" who is discontented with his white-collar job...
, film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
commented, "A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Söze syndrome."