Keyser Söze

Keyser Söze
First appearance	The Usual Suspects
Created by	Christopher McQuarrie
Portrayed by	Kevin Spacey
Information
Nickname(s)	Kaiser
Aliases	Roger "Verbal" Kint
Gender	Male
Occupation	Criminal
Family	probably killed (as we know from the words of Roger "Verbal" Kint)
Born	1964

Keyser Söze ( /ˈkaɪzər ˈsoʊzeɪ/ ky-zər soh-zay) 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 No. 48 villain in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains" in June 2003.

Background

According to "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), 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 shoots his own wife and remaining children 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."

Film revelations

The film The Usual Suspects consists mostly of flashbacks narrated by Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), 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 who 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 blackmailed 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.

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 Satanic 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."

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."

Cultural References

In the spoof Scary Movie, the final scene shows the retard Doofie walking like a cripple, and suddenly begin to walk normally and light up a cigarette, showing that he was in fact the murderer – this was a nod of the head to the Usual Suspects.

Further reading

• Wilson, Wayne (1999), The Psychopath in Film, University Press of America, pp. 251–279, ISBN 0761813179, http://books.google.com/books?id=LBIjsk-2ok4C 

External links

• Keyser Söze at the Internet Movie Database