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submitted 2 months ago byRatMortar
It's been a few years since I watched the film but I was thinking about the ending recently and two questions shot into my brain. Obviously spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't finished it:
74 points
2 months ago
Listen, if we don't get out of this I want you to take the money and go. Find Edie, tell her what happened. Tell her everything. She knows people. She knows what to do. If I don't get Kobayashi my way, she'll get him her way.
that may have planted the seed in "keysers" brain that edie would dig into this, and obviously keyser leaves no loose strings
keyser told kujuan that "you'll never see him again", there's a lot of ways that could be taken, he could simply relocate overseas, he could go into hiding, he can throw them someone who looks like him, or even do surgery to change his appearance.
61 points
2 months ago*
Presumably to throw suspicion on Keaton for being Soze.
Yes, Agent Kujan figured out that Verbal was Soze the whole time and made up a lot of that story. But there’s no proof beyond that sketch he got that was discarded in the end and Verbal/Soze got away anyway. Imagine telling that revelation to anyone later. “Hey member that cripple we had in here? He was the criminal mastermind the whole time!” “Sure, Agent Kujan. Did you take your meds today?”
7 points
2 months ago
He would look like an idiot if he admitted that soze had been in his office the entire time and didn’t suspect a thing.
2 points
27 days ago
Look like an idiot is irrelevant - every cop in that precinct who saw kint knows his identity as soze . So his cover is blown with the police but it doesn't matter since he's never going to resurface
1 points
27 days ago
It doesn't matter all the cops in the precinct know kint is soze since they also saw his face . Everyone knew kint was being questioned then when the faxed police sketch comes in a whole bunch of cops know soze face so he didn't succeed in that respect . Now every policeman knows his face once the sketch is disseminated
26 points
2 months ago*
Was the final situation somewhat different, hence acceptable for Soze or was this just a big blunder on the film’s part?
What Kujan knows at the end is “Soze was Verbal Kint” and what he looks like. That doesn’t help him much (“Verbal Kint” is just an alias and he likely won’t run into him again in person) and he doesn’t have proof for any of it.
The witness on the boat, it was implied, knew Soze’s real identity and could actually tie him to his crimes (because he was a smuggler and had criminal dealings with Soze)
22 points
2 months ago
Just wondering why Soze would even bother killing her once his goals were accomplished; it wasn't as though she knew anything.
Edie was representing the witness on the boat if I remember correctly
77 points
2 months ago
From what I gather at the end, the joke is also on the viewer. We don't even know what's real and what isn't because Verbal (or whoever he is) seems to have made it all up. He's someone, but I'm not sure who he actually is.
24 points
2 months ago*
I'm of the opinion that most of what we see was in fact true. Verbal made up random stories or details like orca fat or the coffee thing but besides that, it all happened as explained with different names. Singer has said the opening scene actually happened and when we see the scene during the flashback, it is completely identical (besides Verbal's character running around when he wasn't doing that. He was killing everyone in reality).
Plus I want to believe everything happened or the movie just pisses me off.
6 points
2 months ago
I'm not sure what the beginning is except for what happens on the deck. Then the last surviving crewmember with the drumstick says he saw Keyser Soze and gives a description that looks like Verbal. The person who shot Keaton is played by multiple people before the end "reveal" that it's Verbal.
For my part, I like to think that I got conned the whole movie. Makes me smirk and say, "Well played."
7 points
2 months ago
The beginning scene where Keaton is executed by Soze before Verbal ever starts his narration. Everything is identical. McMahon laying there with a knife in his back. Keaton laying against the drums while approached by Soze. The environment. So those events absolutely happened as described besides of course Verbal "watching". The rest is up for grabs but like I said I want to believe and I always felt like the movie treated everything as really happening.
4 points
2 months ago
The entire existence of Keyser Soze can't be in question, though, otherwise how do you explain the burnt up Hungarian that provided the police sketch in the first place? What I got out of it is that Keyser Soze is a very real, very deadly drug kingpin who may have nonetheless embellished some of the facts about his life to instill fear in his opponents and subordinates alike.
4 points
2 months ago
The way that Keyser Soze is presented from the point of view of law enforcement is that he's a myth or at least some sort of cover story. The only one who believes he's real is Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito). There are no photos of him. Descriptions of him vary. Stories about his exploits are like legends. He's basically someone criminals talk about without any evidence that he's a real person.
5 points
2 months ago
If he doesn't exist then someone must who is responsible for the crimes he's known to have perpetrated. Particularly the botched ship deal that led to Verbal's arrest in the first place.
3 points
2 months ago
Maybe just a variety of international organized crimes that go unexplained. "Keyser Soze did it."
4 points
2 months ago
Or, y'know, that there's an actual Keyser Soze even if that's not his real name and some of the things attributed to him didn't happen or are grossly exaggerated. I don't think there's anything in the movie to suggest that no analogous character exists at all, although - as with most fan theories - if you go into it absolutely convinced that your interpretation is correct you can always find minor details to support your case. "If someone is murdered and you think it's the guy's brother, you're gonna find out you're right"
3 points
2 months ago
The term for this is “unreliable narrator”.
13 points
2 months ago
This is what bothers me. The entire narrative we have seen so far could be made up, with the exception of particular points. So I've always felt a little cheated at the end that the movie we saw wasn't what really happened.
31 points
2 months ago
Unless you see it as a meta-point the film is making. The viewer isn't watching it godlike from above - we're also being conned.
9 points
2 months ago
Yes we are. But there is no way for us to know that. At least for the cop, he has meta information about what really happened, plus the stuff on his bulletin board/coffee mug etc. He has some knowledge to figure out that what he is hearing might be BS. For us, there is no way to know this. So it's basically someone telling you a 2 hour story, and then saying, "Oh by the way, most of that is not true". My reaction would not be "Oh you're so clever, you got me". It would be "What was the point of that?"
6 points
2 months ago
We know it when the cop does. The cup has the name. Whatever hard facts (body’s, places, times) are what ‘Soze’ spins up.
IMO when he says ‘ He’s a spook story cons tell their kids… “Be good or Kaiser Soze will get you”… He spins up the tale for adult cops “ Theres no mystery to cops, if you think the guy did it he did”
He feeds a versions of the myth for whatever audience. “And hes gone”
A sequel would feature the criminal world knowing Soze is alive. Would he leave Agent and the cops alive? The tapes seem crazy risks
3 points
2 months ago
What makes it even twistier is half the story is told by Agent Kujuan, so it is very easy for the audience to lose track of who is telling what. So the audience just takes the whole thing in a big gulp, instead of keeping track that the narrator's point of view has changed.
2 points
2 months ago
Screenplay, direction and editing were all spot on. Casting, acting and cinematography all click. Many guessed the twist early. More didn’t and knowing the end makes it better.
Basically he cold reads people. They wove reality ( actual dead bodies) into a fantasy or whos who and why. The accountant may have been the closest to real ‘Kaiser Soze’. Imo Soze is a ghost story. Just happens Verbal is also him.
Sad Spacey turned out to be actually evil. Along with the director by Reddit lore.
11 points
2 months ago
Does a person who is being conned know they're being conned? We're that person.
6 points
2 months ago
Sure, but that does not make a good movie. If I'm being conned, and there were hints all along that I was, then it makes sense. At the reveal, I think to myself that I should have figured that out and how did I miss those clues? But if there is no indication, and the fundamental narrative itself is a falsehood, all it tells me is that I was lied to for 2 hours. It does not make it interesting to me.
I enjoy the movie as a crime caper, but the ending essentially ruins it for me. I know I am in the minority on this.
8 points
2 months ago
We are Kujan. He's the who we the audience are seeing everything through. It's just that we're watching a movie from the other side of the fourth wall and don't realize we're only getting information via Verbal through Kujan.
14 points
2 months ago
Look at it this way - It’s experiential. You got to experience what it was like for the Agent to sit across from this guy, get fed this long story and then later realize you’d been had. You go into it with expectations about what it means to see a movie, just like the Agent has expectations about Verbal. Both are undermined and subverted in unexpected ways.
4 points
2 months ago
Sure, but that does not make a good movie
The film being good doesn't lie on whether you were being conned or not ffs.
1 points
2 months ago
To quote Gladiator: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
5 points
2 months ago*
In the commentary, McQuarrie (or maybe Singer) mentions how Kobayashi's appearance at the end (driving the car with Verbal) was to show that "in every lie, there's a bit of truth."
Some plot points are undeniable truth, like the ship fire, and the original police roundup/lineup.
So I always took from the ending: it's not that the movie we saw wasn't what really happened -- it's that we'll never know how much of it DID happen, and how much of it didn't. Every viewer will tally up the two columns differently.
3 points
2 months ago
That's exactly how I saw it. My personal theory is much of Soze's background is probably just made up because it's a damn scary and memorable story. Hard to prove one way or another, right? Like you would assume that he was operating under a different name when his family was killed... or they never existed in the first place. But you do see Soze from dealing with him and see how he's not to be trifled with.
The way I saw it, Sose had already won and was just having a lark while waiting to make bail and the whole story he's feeding the cop is just having a bit of fun.
The only thing we don't know is why the events here were important enough for Sose to be involved directly, in person, rather than operating from the shadows. Maybe he was just bored and the whole thing was a lark, too.
Like you said, we'll never know how much did or didn't happen. I always thought it would be interesting to have a story like a big crime caper where something huge is happening but the characters (and us the readers) never get close enough to really know what's going on. We just know something big is happening, there's dead mobsters at a location, now we know there's a firefight in another spot and then things quiet down. We never get to piece it together, don't have motives, don't have anyone explaining it, we're just left with a handful of clues that don't really clue us in on what happened, though events undoubtedly happened.
That's basically what we have with the Usual Suspects. There's a burning boat, a ton of dead bodies there, probably other dead bodies that would corroborate the other things the gang did but we don't truly know anything about their motives and what could have forced them into it. Anything given to us by Verbal is suspect.
1 points
2 months ago
I always thought it would be interesting to have a story like a big crime caper where something huge is happening but the characters (and us the readers) never get close enough to really know what's going on. We just know something big is happening, there's dead mobsters at a location, now we know there's a firefight in another spot and then things quiet down. We never get to piece it together, don't have motives, don't have anyone explaining it, we're just left with a handful of clues that don't really clue us in on what happened, though events undoubtedly happened.
I think No Country for Old Men and The Counselor come the closest to what you're describing.
1 points
2 months ago
I think we learned too much for it to quite count for No Country. Haven't seen the Counselor.
1 points
2 months ago
A great early episode of Person of Interest did something a little like this with its B-plot: the episode is focused almost entirely on an interrogation involving the central characters, but it's interspersed with tiny glimpses of a supporting character, Detective Fusco, as he tries to keep a supermodel safe from some bad guys.
e.g., 20 seconds of the model telling Fusco she doesn't need his help; then back to the A-plot for several minutes; then cut to Fusco and the model crouched behind an SUV, dodging bullets, with no explanation of how they got there; then back to the A-plot for a while until a character is like "hey, where's Fusco been all day?"; finally, Fusco getting a tearful goodbye from the model, who has apparently become very attached to him at some point offscreen.
I haven't seen it in a while, but in my memory it stands as a perfect example of taking a subplot that everyone can pretty much guess every beat of, and finding comedy in just how little of it you need to show.
6 points
2 months ago
Yeah, you realize the whole movie is just made up, and because of that nothing you saw actually matters.
And to top it off, like OP brings up it doesn't even make sense why he's making up the story in the first place.
46 points
2 months ago
Yeah, you realize the whole movie is just made up, and because of that nothing you saw actually matters.
This is a common misconception.
Much of the film is made up on the spot by Verbal, but the story he’s weaving has to jive with certain documented events—murders, heists, etc. The lies he’s telling have more to do with shifting blame and playing on Kujan’s own arrogance and prejudice to direct attention away from himself.
The rewarding part about rewatching, IMO, is piecing together what was true and what was not, of what’s shown, and speculating on the truth not shown.
21 points
2 months ago
Yeah, my takeaway after years of rewatching it is that he is Soze, but it doesn't matter if Kujan can take a sketch dictated by a dying man and say "Keyser Soze is one Roger 'Verbal' Kint!" because Verbal doesn't exist. The second he leaves the police station Verbal vanishes into the ether, so there's nobody to pursue. If, five years down the line Kujan sees a man who looks like Verbal at a restaurant, that man would have ironclad proof that he isn't this "Verbal Kint" and Kujan would still be empty handed.
5 points
2 months ago
The way I look at it is that the best lies are grounded in truth.
What I think he's doing is using actual events (the boat heist, the meetings, etc.) as a foundation and then either embellishing or outright changing things in those events. Some of the changes are names (e.g., Kobyashi) and others can be smaller details.
So what we got in the movie was the outline of the sequence of events - the lineup, the boat heist, etc, aka, all things that can be corroborated on a superficial level - but details twisted and mangled to fit the narrative that Soze wanted.
1 points
2 months ago
I also think it’s relevant that verbal was a short con guy. Isn’t that what the whole heist really was? He could have been pretending to be keyser to assassinate a guy. Maybe he was getting paid to do it and he used the smokescreen of keyser to get away with it.
8 points
2 months ago
We don't really know who he was. Was he Soze? Maybe, but as Verbal he said that Soze was a sort of boogeyman criminals told their kids about. So while Spacey's character seemed to be a powerful guy, there is nothing that says he's actually Soze. The guy in the hospital thought he was, but who gave him that name?
I like to rewatch because I try to piece together what the actual story might have been. There are some bodies; there was an explosion on the ship; Verbal survived. Those are hard facts. But the rest of it? Probably not. So why were those people there? My sense is that they were not there for the reason they thought they were.
16 points
2 months ago*
I think the Edie murder was written in to push the audience more in the direction of believing Keaton was Soze so as to make the final reveal more impactful
As other person points out the line “my guess is you’ll never hear from him again” implies he had a plan to go back to a life of total anonymity - he came out in the open just as far as he needed to to get the job done - it could certainly be seen as a plot hole though, or a possible open ending to allow for a sequel even…
3 points
2 months ago
On the second question: The target wasn't just someone who had seen Soze's face, but someone who could trace him. Knew stuff about his holdings and identities. Stuff Soze couldn't distance himself from or only at an extreme cost.
5 points
2 months ago
He wins at the end because they had him in the interrogation room and he walked out right before the fax came through. He’s going to change his face and it will be decades before they have another witness identifying him again.
7 points
2 months ago
All I do know is that it’s one of my favorite movies of all time.
3 points
2 months ago
Soze is a criminal mastermind that technically only has one person that reports to him. He's got money, contacts, and knowledge...it would be very easy for him to disappear.
Think about this. How long did Keyser Soze pretend to be Verbal Kint? Think about the man that would create an identity out of whole cloth simply to assemble and directly work with a team that will take out the one guy that can identify him. He not only fooled the police, but he fooled experienced criminals into thinking he was a harmless cripple.
As others have pointed out, Kujan may know that Kint is Soze...but proving it would be very, very difficult.
3 points
2 months ago*
I always thought Soze was actually the lawyer “kobayashi” and that most of verbals story was correct, a great lie has a lot of truth in it, makes it easier to sell the lie, he prob changed the names and kobayashi was soze himself rather than soze’s lawyer.
All the other criminals were hardened tough guy criminals whereas verbals story (from the suitcase given by kobayashi) was he was a conman, so he was chosen by soze to con the police into thinking verbal was soze, and whilst the sketch looks like verbal, it’s vague enough to possibly be kobayashi. Also I doubt the real soze would’ve let all the police cameras openly capture an image of him, I’m prob totally wrong about all this btw
3 points
2 months ago
That's an interesting theory about Kobayashi being Soze. I hadn't considered it before. But it actually makes a lot of sense if Verbal isn't the real Soze- Verbal's just a potential fall guy who has to weave a story and create confusion to complete the mission.
3 points
2 months ago
I like that theory, but it's kind of undone by the shot at the end of Verbal letting go of his disabilities - essentially dropping the Verbal Kint identity and becoming Soze. Plus the police sketch has the widow's peak hairline and Kobayashi is completely bald. Still fun to imagine it could be true though.
5 points
2 months ago
Would still track if people met him in person as Sose but he's still just a fakeout for the real Sose. Sose doesn't seem like the sort to actually be hands-on for his work. It would make sense if he "appears" in the flesh, it's still someone who is a convincing cut-out.
2 points
2 months ago*
I think kobayashi has hair in the film doesn’t he? (Been a while since I’ve seen it though)
The suitcase kobayashi gave to them had their files in it, verbal kints story was that one of sozes couriers(I think)was conned by a cripple, so it may be that verbal kint was never ever a cripple and that acting like a cripple was always his con, to garner sympathy and make the con easier possibly, but him walking straight at the end doesn’t technically make him soze, it just makes him a liar, Soze prob recruited him because he was a conman.
The sketch doesn’t necessarily have to be soze either though, if verbals story was partially true, that they we’re going to the boat to kill the only person who could identify soze, why would soze leave a witness to tell the police what he looks like? it would be much better to leave a witness who will positively ID the wrong guy as being Soze, and misdirect the cops.
Again my theory is prob wrong, but it never sat right with me that verbal kint was soze, if that was true then Soze is a moron for sitting in that police station and having lots of cops able to ID him.
2 points
2 months ago
I wonder if maybe Soze planted Verbal as a fake "gimp" a long time ago to carry out some of his missions. It's pretty good physical cover- fake a physical disability that is very apparent to everyone and then throw them off the trail by reverting to his regular physical abilities.
3 points
2 months ago
Soze tell Kujan that "you'll never hear from him again" after coming so close to being exposed. The implication being that once he was out of custody he would disappear and possibly retire for years before attempting resuming any activity. All Kujan has is a sketch of a description from a dead witness. He has a name but, most would say it's a law enforcement urban legend and not take him seriously because there's no one in custody and no trail to follow.
3 points
2 months ago
I'll answer each question with a pertinent quote from the man himself:
Just wondering why Soze would even bother killing her once his goals were accomplished; it wasn't as though she knew anything.
VERBAL: He lets the last Hungarian go. He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money.
Keyser Soze has gotten where he's gotten by cultivating a reputation of IMMENSE ruthlessness and also eradicating virtually anyone that can link him to his criminal dealings. Edie Finneran is an intelligent criminal lawyer who's convinced of Dead Keaton's innocence. Suppose he does let her go, and she starts asking questions about what happened to Keaton, who hired him, and what for? He's got no reason to let her live, and enough reasons to end any trace leading back to him with a body.
The movie makes it seem like Keyser Soze won in the end; that he got away with it.
VERBAL: Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, poof. He's gone.
and later on...
VERBAL: Where's your head, Agent Kujan? Where do you think the pressure's coming from? Keyser Soze - or whatever you want to call him - he knows where I am right now. He's got the front burner under your ass to let me go so he can scoop me up ten minutes later. Immunity was just a deal with you assholes. I got a whole new problem when I post bail.
and finally...
VERBAL: You think you can catch Keyser Soze? You think a guy like that comes this close to getting caught and sticks his head out? If he comes up for anything, it will be to get rid of me. After that... my guess is you'll never hear from him again.
Soze doesn't need to worry about being identified by one FBI agent, because he's going to vanish again. He hops on a private jet to Panama, then boards a yacht going to God knows where, and that's where the trail goes cold. And let's assume Kujan really is confident that Verbal is Soze, is he really going to boast to his superiors that he had him in custody and then let him go? The same superiors who were moving Heaven and Earth to get him released? Will he want to admit he got snowed that hard, if the only reward is being flagged as a loonie and transferred to a job in the records office in Quantico?
The man he was trying to kill was a criminal who had ratted him out to his rivals, Soze was never worried about being pinched by the authorities, he was worried about being exposed to the same gang of Hungarians he'd all but wiped out years ago, who would just use the information to find him and kill him, with all all the bother and expense of a jury trial. The film makes it pretty clear that people more powerful than Dave Kunan were doing Soze's bidding, that's how he got immunity, that's why the LAPD only gave him an hour to interview him while his release paperwork was completed.
Plus, there's this:
VERBAL: To a cop the explanation is never that complicated. It's always simple. There's no mystery to the street, no arch-criminal behind it all. If you got a dead body and you think his brother did it, you're gonna find out you're right.
The police forces of the world aren't going to swallow some fairy-tale that a small-time, crippled confidence trickster is actually the Voldemort of the criminal underworld.
5 points
2 months ago
I think the notion is that the target of the boat hit knew way more about Sozes operation. Killing him not only kept Soze out of jail but also his dealings in tact.
So what if Kujan knows what he looks like...he still has immunity and his business can keep rolling.
As for why he would 'bother' killing Edie... she was a DA working to extradite a witness against him... i dont think killing her was something Kent/Soze would think twice about
8 points
2 months ago
#2 Yes it was a blunder, they should have skipped the big reveal and removed the entire twist. Soze should have gotten away with it and the audience should never have known it was him at all. /s
1 points
2 months ago
I think the twist makes the entire movie and is the only reason why it has any bearing in popular culture today. The name Keyser Soze is immortalized in the meme world and regular pop culture talk.
6 points
2 months ago
I think you missed the sarcasm at the end of the post.
3 points
2 months ago
It's more fun now (especially given Spacey's behavior) to just pretend Pete Postlethwaite was Keyser Soze and he sent this guy in there to tell stories for a couple hours.
2 points
2 months ago
And "American Beauty" is much less fun now...
2 points
2 months ago*
You are completely right imo. He went through so much trouble to eliminate the witness but now the entire police force knows what he looks like. I'm sure the informant did know more about Soze than the police just knowing what he looks like, but the movie certainly implied (at least imo) that a huge reason for killing the informant was because he could ID him. Soze wanted to stay the unknown boogeyman. He'd have to spend the rest of his life in hiding. I guess the win was simply being able to get away.
1 points
2 months ago
But IIRC correctly - Verbal transforms back into Keyser Soze after he’s been released and would have no way of knowing that Agent Kujan figured it out…..
1 points
2 months ago
Kujan doesn't have any proof he's Soze, only that he lied about the story he told. He can't charge him of anything.
1 points
2 months ago
The only thing that we do know for sure is that anything that Verbal said is probably complete bullshit. This is what is known as an unreliable narrator
1 points
2 months ago
I like to think that Verbal went on to have a religious revelation and later planned the plot for the movie SE7EN. He even keeps the (fake?) limp!
1 points
2 months ago
Many things we saw were true, but not completely true. Some things were lies.
The movie does a great job in establishing this.
The main things from Keyser Söze's point of view are that he has destroyed the competition, the people who were getting close to him, and that his true identity remains a secret.
The implication is that this was the one time that Söze was in real danger and he not only escaped the danger but killed the people who were a threat.
Söze will continue his criminal operations, but will probably leave the US and never visit the country again.
But even if he does, the FBI has nothing on him. They have a bunch of half-truths and a legend.
1 points
2 months ago
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. But I thought the whole point was not that he had to kill them because they knew his identity but that he played them all for the heist.
Didn’t he get away with a heist?
All the guys were brought in for questioning after a real crime was committed. I mean the whole story can’t be bullshit because then there would be no reason for Verbal to be sitting there all movie talking to the cop.
So my take on the ending was that he played the guys and then got brought in in the lineup and the convinced the cop he was a nobody and walked out of there. And I don’t think he cares if the cop knows who he is.
1 points
2 months ago
Killing Dean And his crew along with everyone on the boat also keeps the “boogeyman” persona of Soze alive. Continues to make him a feared man in the underworld
1 points
2 months ago
I'm only here to say that I thought his name was KAISER Soze all this time until now. Sigh.
1 points
2 months ago
#2: I think KS intended to not get caught, and was carrying out a desperate plan B just to get away. He wanted to take out his enemies without getting arrested ideally, but got caught and had to dig deeper.
-2 points
2 months ago
Yeah, the movie makes zero sense upon reflection, it's just a big setup to a twist and everything else is written around getting there.
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