Keyser Söze explained: the legend, the reveal and the name
Spoilers ahead: this article discusses the ending.
Keyser Söze explained in one sentence: he is Verbal Kint. The Usual Suspects, directed by Bryan Singer from Christopher McQuarrie's script and released in 1995, spends its whole running time building a criminal legend and then reveals he was the harmless-looking man telling the story.
Kevin Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Verbal, and the character's name has become shorthand for a feared figure nobody can find.
Here is who Söze is in the story, how the reveal works, and how the filmmakers built him.
Keyser Söze explained: who Keyser Söze is in the story
In the legend told in the film, Söze is a crime lord so ruthless that when Hungarian rivals took his family hostage, he killed his own family rather than give in, then hunted down his enemies and disappeared. Criminals tell the story to frighten each other, and few believe he exists.
His lawyer, Kobayashi, played by Pete Postlethwaite, blackmails the five suspects into attacking a rival gang's boat, telling them each has crossed Söze in the past.
How the reveal works
Verbal, a con man with a limp, is interrogated by customs agent Dave Kujan, who is convinced Dean Keaton, played by Gabriel Byrne, is Söze. Verbal lets Kujan believe it. After Verbal is released, Kujan looks at the cluttered bulletin board in the office and realises names and details from the story were taken from it.
As Verbal walks away, his limp disappears and his hand straightens. A fax arrives with a sketch of Söze that looks like him. He gets into a car driven by the man he called Kobayashi and leaves.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled
Verbal's best-known line says the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. The idea is borrowed from the French poet Charles Baudelaire. The line explains the character: Söze survives by being thought a myth.
Was Verbal really Söze
The film's design suggests so, though it leaves room for doubt.
- Singer believes Verbal is Söze and points to the fax as proof.
- Postlethwaite said Singer told the actors that each of their characters was Söze. Asked directly who it was, Postlethwaite replied: "Nobody knows."
- Because almost everything we see is Verbal's account, it is unclear how much happened at all.
Where the name came from
McQuarrie based the name on Kayser Sume, a former supervisor at a Los Angeles law firm where he had worked, and changed the surname. He found the word söze in a Turkish dictionary; it translates roughly as talks too much, a joke given that the character hides behind a man who never stops talking.
The film's title came from a Spy magazine column, which in turn took it from Claude Rains's line in Casablanca, "Round up the usual suspects."
Legacy
The American Film Institute placed Söze 48th on its list of the greatest heroes and villains in 2003. Time magazine once compared Osama bin Laden to him, a sign of how widely the name is understood. Accepting his Oscar, Spacey joked that Söze would get "gloriously drunk" that night.
Söze is barely on screen, and when he is, his face is hidden. The audience builds him from stories, the same way the criminals in the film do. That is the trick of the character: he is as large as the fear people have of him, and the man who gets to define him is the one telling the story.
Questions people ask
Who is Keyser Söze?
Verbal Kint, the con man who narrates the story to the police.
What does Söze mean?
Christopher McQuarrie took it from a Turkish dictionary; it roughly means talks too much.
Who said the greatest trick the devil ever pulled?
Verbal Kint says it in the film; the idea comes from Charles Baudelaire.