After a deadly explosion in an L.A. harbor, police inspector Kujan (Palminteri) interrogates hobbled, chatty con artist "Verbal" Kint (Spacey) about his criminal associates: bad cop Keaton (Byrne), ornery weapons expert Hockney (Pollak), wise guy McManus (Baldwin), and flashy mumbler Fenster (Del Toro), all presumed dead. Verbal reveals how, after being rounded up for a police line-up five days earlier, the men hatched a heist scheme and became involved with a mysterious, mythical underworld figure named Keyser Söze.

Singer's ingenious noir thriller takes a twisty, complicated plot about betrayal and recrimination and turns it into a dark fable about the things we fear most: what we can't see and don't understand. Spacey won an Oscar for his unnerving portrayal of Verbal Kint, a man at once physically vulnerable and intellectually devious, but the entire cast — Byrne, Pollak, Baldwin, and a hilariously indecipherable Del Toro — bring their gallery of quirky deviants to vivid life. Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie push the mystery past the tidy, clichéd conclusion into a most unexpected realm, making these "Suspects" anything but usual.