Kill James Bond! - S4E21: The Usual Suspects

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Oh yeah, this one's not going to be insanely fraught to talk about ----- TSHIRT ALERT: ADVERSE CONDITIONS MOVIE CLUB PREORDERS NOW OPEN Thats right, the long-awaited Adverse Conditions Movie Club shirt is finally available for preorder on our website. Featuring art from the incredibly talented Mika Kurzmann-Abrams! Preorders close end of August. ----- We've been nominated for Podcast of the Year at the ITV bCreator Awards! It’s public vote, so vote for us here under “creator shortlist”. should take about a minute, you don’t have to live in Britain to vote! www.bcreator.co.uk/awards/ ----- Friend of the show Bella, a refugee evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021, is raising money for her gender confirmation surgery! Anything you can give would be hugely appreciated! https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/team-bella ----- Check out friend of the show Mattie's new book Simplicity here, or wherever fine graphic novels are sold! ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. In our home, we talk a lot about how insane everything feels, and agonise constantly over what can be done to best help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza facing the full brunt of genocidal violence. My partner Rebecca has put together a list of four fundraisers you can contribute to- all of them are at work on the ground doing what they can. -Palestinian Communist Youth Union, which is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 -Thamra, which distributes herb and veg seedlings, repairs and maintains water infrastructure, and distributes food made with replanted veg patches https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-thamra-cultivating-resilience-in-gaza ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the every app account

There is a guy that we have to talk about in this one who obviously we have to disavow and just get out of the way quickly. He's barely a working actor. Obviously, we don't support Stephen Baldwin endorsing Trump three times. Did he? I didn't know that. Yeah, he's a big, he's a big MAGA guy. He himself is in the religion season of his own life and is now doing a lot of like evangelical

pictures. So obviously we don't, we distance ourselves from that. We also need to distance ourselves. This could be the cold open wheels. Obviously need to distance ourselves from Kevin Spacey. Who? Yeah, something happened? Mr. Acquitt of All Chargers.

Yeah, the actor, yeah. Last I heard he was acquitted of all charges. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Pid of All Charges. Listen, I had an ending for this, which is just to say that this is an episode of Kill James Bond about film The Usual Suspects, which is a film directed by Brian Singer,

starring Kevin Spacey. You will have to bleep this. bit, welcome to the . Oh, we will most certainly have to bleep that, not least of all, because Kevin Spacey is a man for whom, let's put this in as vague as possible. A lot of all, because Kevin Spacey is a man for whom, let's let's put this in as vague as possible. A lot of people have to say, said shit and then died. That is true. So I'm not super interested in saying shit. If only I had a drop from this movie about Kevin Spacey's character in which someone says of him.

I'm telling you the sky is protected from up on high by the Prince of Darkness. Take my word for it. But, you know, hypothetically. Hi. Welcome. Kill James Bond. Hi. Hi.

It's November. I'm joined as always by my friends, Abigail Thorne and Devon. Hello. What's up? No opinions at all about the work of that actor. No thoughts head empty. I haven't heard anything about Brian Singer in my life. So, with that of mind...

I genuinely have not. I didn't know that. I did. Throw some interesting parties. So it's... We're doing the usual suspects because Kevin Pollock is in this movie and Kevin Pollock was in End of Dead. days wearing the exact same fit and looking like a Zempic Silent Bob.

And I was like, oh yeah, the usual suspect. That's a heist movie. Gabriel Byrne. Gabriel Burn. Yeah. It makes sense. There's a heist kind of. It is.

Yeah. There's crimes being done. Yeah. Allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah. If you haven't seen The Usual Suspects before, 1995's The Usual Suspects, and you don't know what happens in the movie The Usual Suspects, go and what happens in the movie The Usual Suspects.

go and watch the usual suspects. Yeah, you should go and watch it because, like, it's, it is unfortunately an extremely good film. It's very well written. It did win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and, like, it kind of deserves it. It's very well written. It's really good.

Yeah, I wouldn't, it's pretty good, it's fun. I think in some ways it's kind of dated now as a movie, but, like, it is a movie that you do need to, you can have spoiled for you, right? In the same way, we'll be doing the same thing when we do Fight Club, right? Where it's like, there is a big, like piece of plus information, which we have to reveal, which will kind of spoil it for you.

Like Zardos. It's like we say with Zardos, but this isn't as good as Zardos. Yeah. That's true. Well, what is? That's a real opinion that I have. I agree, actually. Yeah, it wasn't an opinion I ever expected to have, but I agree with you fully. Yeah. Check out the usual suspects. We will be spoiling the usual suspects. I'm going to give you a space to watch the movie, the usual suspects. Okay. Now, thank, welcome back. Oh, it's giving me like language learning tape, like exam vibes. Welcome back. It's so good to have you. We're now going to spoil the movie The Usual Suspects.

Let the podcast over to Side Beat. Put it on as you're like on the plane asleep so that you can learn about the usual suspects. Yeah. You learn unconsciously about the usual suspects and then you wake up and you go, oh, it was Kevin Spacey the whole time. Does that work? I feel like they stopped doing that. That might indicate that it doesn't work. Yeah, I wish that works.

I think the only thing it works for is like Sissy Hypno, which is how we all got this way. But like, yeah, of course, of course. But so we begin on a boat in the middle of San Pedro Harbor and California at night, bodies litter the deck, right? There are like, sort of like small fires everywhere. This is the aftermath of a serious gunfight and a guy in like a fedora and a trench coat, because this is a noir film as well, it's a neo-noir, like stalks past the bodies to encounter Gabriel Byrne.

From end of days. From end of days. That's Satan. Yeah. Yeah. He's dying. He's been shot. And he calls this shadowy figure Kaiser, uh, and Kaiser holds his guns sideways and

executes Gabriel Burn. The holding the gun sideways is an important detail. I just how you know it's cool. He then drops a cigarette, ignites a trail of gasoline, and blows up the boat. Yes. Uh, and we, we see the whole boat go up. The boat, which is called the Tanager, which I just like, because it's a good word.

It's a type of bird, I think. And then we get some narration that's like, well, here's how it all started, which is another film noir staple as well. And it's being delivered by Kevin Spacey shot in a very sinister way with light coming up underneath. Kevin Spacey talking to the police.

Yeah. And he says six weeks ago in New York, a bunch of us all get arrested. One of them is Kevin Pollock. One is Benicio del Toro He gets picked up on the street An alarmingly young Benicio del Toro

Not the youngest Benicio del Toro we've ever seen But very young That's of course in License to Kill Is the youngest Gabriel Byrne as well And Stephen Baldwin Stephen Baldwin yeah I'll back up a bit

Because the reason why they're all getting arrested Is because this truck full of gun parts Has been robbed in New York And someone has heard a voice and that's enough for the cops to put it all together and arrest who they think are the guys. Yeah. The usual suspect of the title.

Exactly. Yeah. Gabriel Byrne is in a posh restaurant when he's arrested with a lady and a French couple. And we're going to spend a bit more time with him than some of the other characters. And he's quite upset to be arrested in this posh place in front of this lady.

He's trying to go straight. He's doing it. He is, as we see. Yeah, yeah. And it's also really funny because he's doing it in a way that he is bad at it. It's not like hugely textual. it's not laughing at him, but his pitch to these guys is a restaurant that changes with the taste

without losing the overall aesthetic. And I'm like, all right, thanks, man. Perfect. We'll call you. This is not a guy who knows what he's doing, but he is trying to go legit. And the cops take a great pleasure. In particular, one Fed, one customs agent, Dave Kuyen, takes particular pleasure in like arresting him very visibly and ruining his meeting with his investors. And so they get put in a police line up and they have to repeat a phrase which the hijacker of this truck allegedly said hand me the keys you fucking cock sucker

and they're all like laughing about it and joking about it as Kevin Spacey tells us in the narration this is essentially a shakedown like they're pretty sure none of them did it but the cops are just rounding them up to harass them basically and you get a sense of the sort of like tone on set which was apparently constant coaxing because as they're all doing

the hand me the keys you fucking cock sucker line in the most like each of them puts their own little spin on it in a way that is like obviously ridiculous to them and they're all making each other laugh they even like get Gabriel Byrne to crack a smile as well. Kevin Spacey's last and he does this really like kind of loose like hand me the keys you fucking cock sucker and it's it's just like it's really good you get a sense that like all of these guys know each other or like in the same, there's a criminal fraternity, right? And this movie really, really likes bad guys. It really likes criminals and it really likes the kind of relationships between them

in a way that I think is really good. It's just really efficient, like, setting up all of these different personalities. Like, they basically do it in one line. And so the cops are very mean as they're shaking down these guys. They do homophobically abuse and assault Gabriel Byrne. They do, like, beat him. And then they're all held in a cell together. And at this point we realized, oh, the cops have kind of inadvertently assembled a crew.

Yeah. They just did the whole assembling the team montage for them. Yeah. McManus, Stephen Baldwin, is the one who goes, all right, if we're all going to get our time wasted here, we should get something out of this. I have an idea. Yeah. If we network, then this getting arrested is a business expense. He's also really hot in this movie.

I'm sorry. I don't like the fact that I'm sort of like attraction to men is like creeping into the movie. But yeah, he's wearing the turtleneck and like it just, I didn't hear nothing for me. Dog shit haircut. It's the like husky voice as well. It's like, mm. Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of him in this, but I get, I understand. I was more attracted to Gabriel Byrne. Well, Gabriel Byrne, Gabriel Byrne's there in his suit, a really good image of him in the like white suit brown shoes and no shoelaces because he's in jail. The brog's just kind of flying open. But he wants to nothing to do with this, right? Because he has gone straight. And McManus in particular does not believe it because Dean Keaton is a criminal of some repute. He is known to all of them. And he's like, gone straight, say it ain't so. Yeah. Yeah. And also in particular, he's dating a big lawyer now.

And he's like, oh, yeah, nice play. Nice, nice move. You're kind of conning her. And he's like, no, I'm serious about this. I really am. Right. He gets really heated when it's implied that he's conning his beautiful hot lawyer wife. It's true, but apart from that, it's also, he's also kind of emasculated by it, because McManus, again, asks him if he is a lawyer's wife. There's a lot of gender in this movie. This movie says a lot about masculinity. Mm-hmm.

You know, you've got to do crimes. Yeah. The law is a woman. All of them are in on the idea of, like, doing some kind of job together, but they don't know Kevin Spacey. Yeah, like, who's this guy? Only Byrne knows Kevin Spacey. And Kevin Spacey is playing a guy called Verbal Kint, who is just like sitting off to one side.

They call me verbal because I talk too much is the joke, right? And verbal does not really fit in. He's like got this kind of goofy sense of dress. He looks like Kevin Spacey, he's alarmingly bald, and also he has like a palsy, right? So like one side of his body is sort of like partially paralyzed and Spacey is like acting this. like one leg, like trails and like one arm is like weaker than the other. Yeah, his head's often angled a little bit as well. Yeah.

He's got this brutal widow's peak, I gotta say. He's got one of the worst widows peak as I've ever seen in my entire life. But so Keaton knows him from having been in jail together where he was in for fraud as well. So like all of these other guys are violent criminals specifically. But verbal is, he's a con man, right? He's a trickster. Yeah. And like a small time crook

There's the sense that he's not quite as serious as the rest He kind of says when he's doing the lineup Like it gave me an excuse to act like I was notorious Which is fun And back in the present day we see however That Kevin Spacey is the only survivor Of this big boat explosion thing Apart from presumably Kaiser

Wherever that guy is And one other person who's in a coma Yes Boo, what's up, it's Devon Not the one you were just listening to But a different one from the future for that Devon But the past for you We don't ever do mid-roll ads, so I'm going to keep this under a minute.

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So, that's been my minute. I'll let you get back for the episode, but please. Give a little back, huh? Give a little back. We find this out because an FBI agent played by Giancarlo Esposito, also alarmingly young, goes to the scene. So Dave Cuyen, the customs agent, who we saw earlier, flies out to L.A. to interview verbal kint.

And when he does, the LAPD cop there is like, he's the one who tells him, like, this guy is protected, right? He came in. the DA was gonna charge him and like sent him straight to jail after, like, and he was in there for like 10 minutes and like came out like shaking, right? And then after that, like, the mayor called, the governor called, this guy is protected. And so the DA has made a deal with verbal. He is getting charged with like a misdemeanor weapons violation for which he will post bail in two hours. And after that, he just walks and kind of know at that point, you know, never going to see him again, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't recognize one Carlo Esposito with hair in this. It's like, it's strange seeing him with a head of hair. Yeah, the little, the little gouty. But so, but so Cuyen is like, I want to interview him, right? Even though all of this, all of this stuff. He's got a statement, like, yeah. He has a statement, but he's like, no, I want to get this interview in.

There's nowhere to do it. And he's looking around his, like, office, which's got all the, like, crime shit with, like, I don't know, the red strings on the wall behind him. He's like, we'll just do it in here. Yeah. I got a listening device in the cigarette box. Because Kint won't go into an interrogation room because he's paranoid about being recorded, about having his voice recorded.

And all of the testimony he's given to the DA, he got immunity for that. Like, it's all inadmissible. You can't charge him with anything because of what he says. And so he's just, he's going to try and arrange this one interview at the two hours he's got left with him. Yeah. Because they want to know what's happened because like 27 people are dead. including Keaton. Kevin Space is the only survivor

other than there's like one of the person who's in a coma and also they highlight like what was, if this was a drug raid or drug deal gone wrong, there's no drugs, there's no weapons on the boat, it's not like there's gold bullion, like what the fuck was this? So they bring in verbal Kent and he is very obsequious to Coogan.

By the way, this role of Dave Coon, it's Chaz Pamontieri, they offered this to a bunch of different actors and one guy who turned it down Robert De Niro, and who was always regretted it, apparently. And I'm just, I'm recasting that in my head. I can see it. I can see it. I do. I really think Chow's fucking nails it, though. I really can't imagine anyone else doing it, genuinely. So verbal is initially pretty obsequious, right? He's like, I like, I like cops. Oh, can I put, we get this really, this beautiful moment where just before they go in there to talk to verbal, like they're,

they're having that cop discussion outside about him. And he's in there. And you see, first of all, he's staring directly at the cigarette holder that we know has a hidden recorder in it. And he's just looking at this fucking board behind them. Just his eyes just scanning across it constantly. And it cuts back out to them and they get in there. It sort of looks maybe a little bit compulsive, but also, yeah, you're not sure what that means, yeah. But so, Kuyen goes in and verbalist, like, very obsequence. It's like, I would have liked to have been a cop myself, but, you know, the cerebral palsy.

He keeps starting a bunch of unconnected stories and it's like, oh, when I was like picking beans in Guatemala or when I was part of a barbershop quartet in like Spoky, Illinois. Yeah, yeah. Focus, man. Enough with his ADHD shit. Like, tell us what the fuck happened. So, Coen tries to threaten him, right?

He threatens him because he knows a dealer, right? And there's a good joke line here, which is, you know, a drug dealer called Ruby Dima and Verbal's line is, you know, a religious guy called John Paul. and Koreans like he's my guy and if you don't give me what I want to know

I will have a price put on your head right because okay you've got like immunity doesn't protect you from me right yeah immunity from the law but not from the criminals yes exactly and specifically he wants to know what happened and he

it becomes increasingly clear pretty quickly he's got a real thing about Keaton in particular he genuinely Genuinely, genuinely. Well, I don't know how I want to say genuinely. He seems to believe that this man has not gone straight.

Yeah, he's very, very set against him going straight. We saw him ruin the business deal earlier on. He is like, and now that this guy's in the ground, he's like, this is his fault 100%. We need to pin it on him. Yeah, he's got a vendetta against Keaton. And like film noir, like cop detective parlance, he has a real hard on for him, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Like he's Zenegada moating for his Lupon who is a legend. dead, ostensibly dead. What becomes of the Xenegard is when that Lupons go straight? Oh, that's rough. That's tragic. They don't believe it. They don't believe it. Kuyan's also absolutely adamant that he's like smarter and more capable than Kevin Spacey.

He's like, I'll fucking kick your ass, I'm smarter than you. Like, you can't get around me, you've got to tell me what happened. Yeah. Because the implication is that like verbal is being protected by someone else, right? Because of what he knows. But the Kintz is, verbal is himself, like, weak, right? So we flash back again to, after the lineup, they're all getting let out of the police station because Keaton's lawyer wife, lawyer girlfriend, has, like, gotten him out.

She's come down there and Karen Gull bossed him out of jail. Yeah, which apparently took some doing. She notes that, like, they were trying to hold him without, like, even any authority to do that. for like longer. And we say he's really trying to go straight. He really is sincere about this. But also the rest of the gang are just like watching him from the other side of the street.

Just been like, come on, man. Yeah, doing some great lurking. He's got a real wet puppy vibe to him this whole movie. And that does something for me good. Yeah, yeah. He is a sad man, a pathetic man. They're given good luck. And meanwhile, he's across the street.

Like, she's like, you know, telling him that she loves him. and I mean we only see him get punched in the face but like sort of hints at something darker here he just kind of stares off into space and he says they ruined me in there tonight like this is this is like it's brutal he doesn't even like acknowledge her for a second because he can't as too as he thinking about like

them and the cops and have the cops they're never going to let him go straight and they're just going to keep harassing him and like you know ruining his reputation yeah he's in a real low point right now he's real vulnerable to someone maybe getting in there and telling him to do crimes. And so Verbal shows up at his apartment, or really at the lawyer's apartment, because as

he knows, it's not like you own this place, right? It's like there's a nice kind of yuppie situation. And he explains that the job is stealing $3 million in emeralds. We're going to do top to copy. We're going to do that, but like hardcore. Specifically what I think is a really inventive target, right? Because it's a very plausible thing. New York's finest taxi service.

Yes. New York's finest taxi service is a corrupt ring of police officers who have worked out that there is a lot of money to be made in escorting people, smugglers, drug dealers, whoever, in a police car. So you can charge them and they are protected by that, right? And they're going to rob that while they are carrying a smuggler who is like carrying a load of emeralds. Yeah.

And in particular, Kevin Spacey tells like Keaton, I need you a lot of. on this because they won't, I need the money and they won't take me unless you come on. I need you, man. And he makes, he makes Gabriel Byrne, like, feel sorry for him because Byrne, like, hits him and then he's like, ah, he's like, really, really, he's like, I'm going to be shit in blood tonight. And like, he's got the limp and everything. He tactically gets himself beaten up. He uses exploit disability on himself, right?

Because he pretty deliberately and kind of provocatively goes, oh, yeah, you've got a good, like, scam running with this lawyer, having seen in the, like, um, jail cell that this is something that he's like sensitive about to provoke him into like beating him up a bit and then after he has been he's like oh no I was out of line you know it's really good it's such a good like ingratiation strategy it's just like I'm sorry that's my fault and he sits down on his like conversation pit downstairs it's a split level apartment the decor is awful but it's what you can imagine for sort of a semi rich guy in 95 but he sits down on this looking away from him and Like, that's when he's like, you know, I got a way to do this that wouldn't kill anyone.

Which we see as Keynes's determinant as well, is that like, this is the smart play. This is the thing that sells him is no killing. And so we see the heist go off, right? And it's shot quite sparely as well, which I really like is, first of all, I also got to say, if we're introducing a figure here, which I think we should, it's amazing this hasn't come up in Eurospy season. I love a target coded man And there are a number of ways you can target code a guy But one is putting him in a white suit

And the other is making him like very fat In like a hat like a bow tie Something very prominent Like something like that I think it's in The Untouchables does this as well right Yeah Yeah fuck they do it with a bunch of the guys They get killed and wanted as well

Yep I'll have like target code yeah Yeah yeah yeah He's like wearing a jacket with a crosshairs on the back Yeah, listen, if you're, if you're like a sort of a larger man, you're walking around in a white suit in public, you're basically fucked. It's over for you. Yeah, you're, it's fucking overfewing. It's like, oh, look at this fancy Augustus gloop boy. Yeah, I remember the seminal piece of filmmaking that changed my life, the trailer for that one hitman game where the guy has to like flee from his own assassination.

So yeah, this is our smuggler. And we see him get into the police, the NYPD squad car, right? And pay them this huge, some of money in cash to take him to Staten Island and they are they are being followed by like a van with the guys in it and we get some more narration that tells us that internal affairs got very very close to the taxi service right they almost like sort of like busted them and when they did they went quiet they came back for this one last job and you know iA is still hoping to catch these cops in the act of doing this right And then we call the heist, which is, which is beautiful, actually. This is a fucking great heist.

Heist season, this heist par excellence. It's one of the classic, like, we park a van in front of you. We bring up a van behind you. There are vans to your left and right. You're in van city now, motherfucker. Give me all of your money. Yeah, every single van window has a guy with a shotgun pointed at you. And all of them are yelling, incomprehensibly.

They're wearing stockings over their heads. Yeah. One of them gets out and it stood on top of your car, just kind of jumping up and down. down. You're giving the money over. You're handing it over so quick. Yeah. The money and the emeralds.

Yeah, well, they get the emeralds first and the cops are kind of like holding out of them a bit. And then they sort of like yell at them enough to like make them give up the money. And one of the cops goes, do you know who the fuck I am? And one of them reaches in, it rips his badge off and is like, we do now. Sick. Really fucking good. Fantastic heist.

Kevin Spacey tells us in the narration that 50 cops went down and as he says, everybody got it right in the ass. Mm-hmm. Again, this is a very homophobic movie. It's also a very gay movie. The number of references to cock-sucking or like getting it in the ass remarkably high. And this is not a Tarantino movie. It doesn't like, it doesn't sort of like relish in it exactly.

It's just like, this thinks that it's the kind of like masculinity that it's trafficking in, right? Mm-hmm. My belief is this is just how people spoke in the 90s. That might be true. Yeah. Yeah. It's all Cox and asses back in a day. There's a lot of like casual homophobia.

Mm-hmm. Not that there were any asses back in the day, of course. No, of course. No. But so the heist goes off perfectly. And we see the gang dividing their, we're not dividing their loot, inspecting their loot, which is these like perfect emeralds. And McManus is the guy who knows the fence, Redfoot.

And he's like... Redfoot. All right, well, I'm just going to go with Benicio del Toro, whose character name is Fenster which is kind of funny because they say it a million times and it sounds a bit like, okay. His name is, his name is Fenster, which is slightly funny. That's kind of funny. It's slightly funny.

It's a little bit funny. Particularly when his pitch is to go to California with the emeralds leaving them behind. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're in New York. Yeah. It's such a crazy pitch to be like, all right, well, give me all the emeralds

and I'll go to California. I'll be right back. Yeah. I'll go to. California where the fences. And everyone's like, what? Yeah, and as Kevin Pollock says, My fucking problem, man, is that you and Fentzer off honeymooning in California while the rest of us are sitting here holding our dicks.

And so this leads to the two of them getting right up in each other's personal space. They look like they want to kiss so badly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Pollock's like, you want to dance? And you see... actual corpse thing just worked in, you see Baldwin just kind of like, losing it a little bit, and just start laughing.

And it's just like, this is so homoerotic. It's really, really homoerotic. And I know we have a vested interest in kind of reading that into everything we see, but in this case, it's right there. No, no, these guys were exploring each other's bodies. Like, I'm sorry. There's no way they weren't. So the plan is instead, they all go to Los Angeles together.

We're all going to go to California. Yeah. And that means that Gabriel Byrne has to, like, break an appointment with his girlfriend, which he feels kind of bad because he's got to go for a lads onto a crime trip. Yeah, yeah. And he's that old. I mean, like, oh, my beautiful loyal wife would hate that I'm doing crimes. He has to leave while she's downstairs,

and we get a great shot of him, like, looking at her from this, like, upper floor balcony, just like staring down at her, being like, oh, I'm such a sad boy that I have to do crimes, but I have to do that. And it's Kevin Spacey who's like, we're going to miss the plane. We gotta go. He's like, come on. We gotta go center of a moose or something, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they go to L.A., and they meet with Redfoot, who is a real Matthew McConaughey-looking motherfucker. Insanely cool leather jacket. We go back to the present day for a moment. Dave, the agent, uh, thinks that this, this story that Kevin Space is spitting is, is bullshit. Because he's like, wait, no, Keaton isn't some love-struck puppy.

No way. This is bull. He wouldn't, like, go straight for some girl, right? So Keaton was indicted for murder. He killed three prisoners when he was. in Sing Sing, he's a really nasty bastard, and, and... He used to be a cop. He used to be a cop, and when he was under investigation a few years ago, he faked his own

death, so no way is he fucking dead now. Yeah, this is Kuyang's whole thing, he's like, this guy, first of all, he's faked his death before, and we're not looking into this, like, he's definitely faked it again, he's behind all of this, tell me what you know, tell me what you know, Kevin Spacey. Him being a cop specifically is important as well as, like, context. of why he has this like real animus for him is because he was a dirty cop and it also then makes sense to be like well if he was a dirty cop why wouldn't he have known about the taxi service why that's his idea he came up with that plan definitely yeah yeah meanwhile the guy

who was on the boat has woken up and he's a Hungarian guy so they're speaking through a translator he's looking real like season one episode 8 of Chernobyl here he's looking bad he already up the scares on this guy too, like Esposito, he's called Jack Bear, I believe the character goes in there. And when he sees him, he's like, holy shit, post security everywhere. This guy's like, I don't know, the Hungarian Ripper or whatever. Yeah. And he manages to tell him through an interpreter, he's like, Kaiser Soze. He gets this name out, Kaiser Soze. Yeah, he hears the name and that's when he calls for the interpreter, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this guy is speaking only Hungarian, and he doesn't recognize any of it. And he's saying something more and more insistently.

and then he drops the name Kaiser Susei and that's when you see the effect on Jack Baer is like he's like holy fuck and he calls it specifically he calls Dave Coen as well because we know that he is he's like in on that he's like interested in this as well right not only that but this this guy this Hungarian going on the boat saw Kaiser Sozai's face we don't we don't learn that yet though because that's like a separate it's the next thing with him back in back in flashback

You just get for like Kaiser-Zerz-Zer name. Yeah, because it's like hits. So then they meet with Redford, the fence. And he's like, all right, sure, whatever. I have next job for you. Yeah. Which is that, and McManus is already into this, right? Yeah.

He's always looking for work. And the next job is there's this jeweler from Texas who comes to town. He does appraisals for people. He's always carrying a lot of cash. He's always carrying a lot of jewels. He's got two bodyguards, which is nothing you can't handle. If you rob him, I'll take the jewels. You keep the cash.

That's double money. And Gabriel Byrne doesn't want to do it. Yeah, Keith doesn't want to do it. One job. He said one job. Yeah. I don't want to do interstate crime now, but. Yeah.

And this is something that McManus kind of laughs off this idea of one job. And as verbal tells us in the narration, he does a kind of crime determinism that was very popular at the time of like, listen, you can't change who you are. There's no going straight. You can't stop doing crimes. No. Exactly. Ever. The line is a man can't change who he is. He can convince anyone else, but not himself, which is a real thing I want to anchor in here about the kind of masculinity this movie is presenting as that it is fundamentally immutable, right? Yes, yes. It's like immutable. It's deterministic. Part of being a man is to be locked on a kind of course, right, that you know is going to lead to your certain dude.

And he's violent too. Yes. And so we see that it takes one day of McMahon as being like, come on, do the job, do the job, doing sexy beasts to him. Yeah, it takes like no time at all. He's just like, come on. Are you gonna do the job for me? And he's like, alright, I'm doing a fucking job.

Which this second heist they do in like a parking garage. And the guy's walking to his car with his two big wrestler-looking bodyguards. Yeah. They all ambush him, but not before the guy is able to get in his car. So they're holding the two bodyguards at gunpoint, and it's Keaton's job to, like, break the window of the car and get the like, a tashi case full of jewels and money away from the guy. And by the way, Keaton is at this point wearing a stupid gay little Batman mask, which is funny. So he's got him at gunpoint, and he does, well, he's got some verbs here. His verbs are yell and yell louder.

And once the guy realizes that he's exhausted his verbs, he's kind of like, This guy's work. He doesn't do it. He's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. He's woke. He doesn't want to kill a guy for a robbery. And the jeweler pulls a fucking gun.

Yeah, the dude clocks in. It's like, oh, well, I'm so willing to kill you, brother. I'm 100% ready to do that. I got the verb kill right here. Yeah. And so the bodyguards take this as the cue to start, like, wrestling the other two. Mm-hmm. McManus is like trying to kind of like get a shot off on both of them.

Mm-hmm. And ultimately... Does some cowboy shit. He does. He kills them both with two guns at the same time while wearing a racist hat. It takes him some buildup to pull that off though. I gotta tell you, he's like standing there pointing out them for quite some time before he does nail the double shot. Yeah, yeah.

Which fucks? The jeweler is kill by Kevin Spacey by Verbal Kent. With a perfect fucking headshot, verbal kint just shoots him through the head. Curious. Absolutely. No remorse, no, like, oh my God, I can't believe I did that. Just bang, done. Absolutely.

Like, Keaton's still hesitating even after the two bodyguards have gotten shot, which is that we're a long way here from heats, like, as soon as they knew they were going in for, like, murder one, why leave a living witness, right? Like, he's already down to leave a living witness, and it's verbal kent who has to take that away from him. Kuzian does not fucking buy this for a second. He's like, no, no, this is a fucking stone cold killer. There is no way he would fucking hesitate like this. You are lying to be verbal. Yeah, you are protecting him because he's protecting you, right? Exactly.

Like he's like, you are clearly doing this for him. Keaton is still alive. You are telling me a story that I, that I, yeah, to make him look good because he's protecting you bullshit, I don't believe it. So they get away with a case. And also, I would be remiss if I didn't say. They use a split diopter at this shot. And when I see a split diopter, I go, split diopter.

Oh, split diopter. What's a split diopter? Am I going to real good? Are you going to tell me about cameras? Yeah. Yes. They make films using cameras. I'm sick of people telling me about cameras.

You're standing in front of the fucking thing. There's got to be people behind it who know how it works. I don't want to hear any more about cameras. It's like a half lens right on the very front of it that, like, changes the level of focus so you can have one person in focus up front and one person in focus further away. They use it a lot in things like Come and See and things like that Hitchcock movies and stuff as well

Oh that is pretty cool But they use it in this to keep fucking Kuyan and his other homie In shot at the same time And it's good And I stand up and I point And I go split diopter And my wife says

Shut up So they take the case And it's not full of jewels Or money It's full of heroin Yeah Heroine That is

That's not fucking jewels It's full of H No What you've done is you've You've changed the deal. So they've got to go back to the fence and be like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, L? Yeah, first of all, you fucked up, so I don't know why this is my problem all of a sudden.

Sucks to suck. I'm going to kill you. Yeah. Who fucking introduces Kobayashi? It's all very tense. Verbal does, because Kuyen is like, I don't believe this shit at all. You've got to give me something else. He tries leaning on verbal again.

And verbal eventually, he cracks. And he's like, it was the lawyer. What lawyer? So they go back to. And Redfoot is like, I got this job. He says, I was given this job from some British lawyer who's a middleman for a Big Shot Crime Lord. I don't know who it is.

But anyway, you guys are in luck because Mr. Bigshot, whoever it is, wants to meet you. Yes. And so McManus threatens him on the way out. He's like, you know, if this doesn't pan out and coming back to kill you. And so Redfoot, the accent here is meant to like flick a cigarette into McManus's chest. And what he does instead, by accident, is nail him in the face, and they kept that take. Yeah, fucking rocks it right in the house. Ding!

So good. It's really good, actually, yeah. But so they... They go back to their location, and they try and work out what this means and are interrupted by Guy we love to see. Guy we love to see. Not so much in Brownface, but like, which he is in this means. this movie. But like, in general, guy we love to see. I just don't see why he is either.

It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Well, so, yeah. Sorry, what is his name before I, before we get his name is Pete Posselthwaite, one of the best British actors ever to live. Genuinely. Yes. Phenomenal actor. He's here in Brownface and he's doing an accent. He's doing something generally. He's got the like, cutter kind of like collared shirt as well. Yes. Conceivably could have grown up in like colonial Indian. potentially. Like, he's an old man in the 90s.

There's a few interpretations of this because the accent is a little bit Indian, a little bit Irish, and a little bit of Pete Pustlethwaite's own Yorkshire accent. And so there's a few explanations of this. One of which is that this is Pete Pustlethweight trying to do an Indian accent and just, like, not doing a very good job.

The other is that this guy just has like a weird, made-up accent because he's a weird made-up guy. And like, because this guy might not fucking real because this is a story we're being told by a potentially unreliable narrated. It's fun revisionism, right? Because there are two weird accents in this movie, right? The other one is, we haven't talked about alarmingly young Benicio del Toro delivers all of his lines like this.

So when I got damn piss hell stole that fucking truck. What did you say? Yeah, no, it's exactly the fuck like that, the entire movie. I don't know what the fuck is happening there. I know what the fuck is happening there, and I will tell you about it in a second. But so this lawyer, Kobayashi, Mr. Kobayashi, he presents himself as working for Kaiser Surzee, this big scary crime lord, right? Yes.

All of these guys have in some way wronged Kaiser Surze without even knowing it, because he has people everywhere. Like, they're just doing perfectly ordinary crimes, and you con the wrong person, Does that person know they work for Kaiser Sozei? Of course not, because, as he says, Mr. Sozay rarely works with the same people for very long, and they never know who they're working for. One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.

Sick. Again, so many lines in this movie where I just go, God, that's sick, that rule. Yeah. But so... There's also a particular detail where they're like, oh, you, Kevin Pollock, you wronged Kaiser Sozee when you robbed that truck full of gun parts.

And then they all turned to him like, what the fuck and he's just yeah he's literally just like put his time to like

hey gotta rob someone it's really good yeah yeah yeah so yeah yeah I've been

listening up Kaiser he's been pulling the strings all along he's the one who had you brought in

at the start of the movie you all stole from him you all owe him the only person who doesn't know who Kaiser

is is Kevin Spacey and they have to explain it to him Kevin Spacey goes who's Kaiser Caesar that's why

the cops were trying to hold Keaton for longer is so that Kobayashi could speak to them but the lawyer got him out in time so that he couldn't and so they've had to play it this way.

There's a moment here I really like where Kevin Pollock loses his temper and he pulls a gun on Pete Possible Threat and he holds the gun sideways and the movie shows us that really prominently it's really cool and Pete Possothway's like that won't do you any fucking good

you're already on the hook for murdering the jeweler and his two bodyguards and if you like we can just dob you in for that and make the water that you're in even hotter so how about you do a fucking job for Kaiser-Surze Big Man? He presents this as well as an order from Kaiser, so say, as well. Like, it's not like, he's not asking you, it's on an interview, you will do this.

And he leaves them with a sort of a parting gift, which is a briefcase, and we see them open this on a pool table with the very firm conviction that it's just going to explode, right? The exhale as it doesn't is really good. But what is in there is like an envelope for all of them, the one for fencing. still will probably be the episode arcs. It's quite a funny visual. And it's got the like, it's got the docks. It's got the dossier.

Yeah, they've been docks. They've got fucking everything, pal. Every crime you've ever done, every sweetie you've stolen from the fucking village shop. It's in here, buddy. Photos of Gabriel Byrne with his girlfriend. Yeah. And so we have to, we have to, because Kevin Spacey doesn't know who Kaiser-Serzorzor is. We've got to now hype him up some more.

Sorry, one more thing, because the job that they want them to do is he's like, There's going to be a boat in the harbor with $91 million worth of cocaine on it. It's being dealt by some rival Argentinians of Kaiser Sersay. We want you to blow up the fucking Coke. And hey, as a sweetener, you can keep the money that they're bringing in to, like, pay for it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so at this point, they're like, Kevin's basically like, who the fuck is

Kaiser Sersay? Keaton doesn't believe that Sersay exists, right? He thinks he's just a kind of like boogeyman, right? It's a name that you use to scare people. It's a kind of flag of convenience, right? But we see that Fenster does and is scared, right? Because he has heard that Kaiser Serze is like a butcher specifically. He's like, you know, a very, very dangerous man.

Back in the present day, Kevin Spacey, like, talks up Kaiser Sozay's legend to. He's like, oh, apparently he's like a Turkish criminal whose enemies like raped his wife. and then he didn't blink and then they were holding his wife and kids at gunpoint to intimidate him and he shot his wife and kids himself because he's so, and he like left one guy alive and he's got two dicks

and he's nine feet tall and he shoots lasers from an eye on his forehead like he's the biggest guy this guy, he's a fucking like story that criminals tell their children you know like go to bed on time or Kaiser Soze is going to get you this guy a bunch of Hungarians

took his wife and kids hostage and rather than like, let them kill him. Let them kill them. He just killed his wife and kids instead. And just like, fuck you. What are you going to do now? Motherfucker. And it disappears. Interesting role for women in this movie. Also, he's shot from, it's shot entirely from behind. He's got this like long hair. He looks a bit like, like, Zach from Auntie Donna or that one guy from what we do in the shadows. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Germaine Clement from Woody the Steners. Yeah. Name two men with long hair sort of like moment there on my part. But like. And so Kevin Spacey realized.

is that Dave the agent is, like, trying to use him to catch Kaiser Sersay, and he's like, you're never going to be able to do it, right? A, as soon as I get out of fear, Kaiser Sose is going to have me fucking killed, and there's no way you could protect me for him. I'm fucking toast. He goes, I am being protected from Monhigh because Kaiser Sosei knows I survived that night, and the second I walk out of here, I'm 100 kinds of fucked. So, like, you can't threaten me with anything because I know I'm done.

He knows I saw him. Like, he's going to fucking kill me. Yeah. And also, in particular. he says, you think a guy like that comes this close to get a caught and then sticks his head out. No way. You're never going to catch him. After this, you're never going to see him again.

You're never going to hear about him again. So Fenster runs, right, because it's like the only plausible thing. And this is why. Yeah, Fenster just dips out. Yeah, Fenster just dips out. No warning. Yeah, no warning at all. I guess Fenster just wasn't ready to commit.

a serious crime. So the reason why Benicio del Toro plays the accent so weird is because reading the script, he works out that Fenster's only role in the movie is to die to establish threat, right? And then he's like, if that's the case, there is no point in me doing anything other than getting really weird with it to make it more memorable, which is such a brilliant kind of spiked move by an actor and it works perfectly. Is that genuinely weighted? Yeah, that is true.

That's really, really funny. I'm going to make sure that this is a star, a star making role, even though I'm just here to get killed, that rules. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to just blend in. And so, of course, Kobayashi is like, hey, that was weird how Fenster just, like, dipped instantly. By the way, you should go to these coordinates or whatever,

where they find that he has been killed horribly, of course. Right. It's a little harsh, but, yeah. Yeah. McManus is the one who is devastated and is like, We have to like dig a beach grave with our hands. He's just like lying dead on the beach and McManus just drops to his knees and starts digging. Like, it doesn't make sense what he's doing, but he's like, he's just that affected

by it. Yeah. He ends up kind of like by force of will, like bullying all the others into helping make this kind of like... I mean, the disappearance of Fenster evidently affected him in a big way, but you know, not thinking straight, fair enough. Mm-hmm. What the fuck happens next one?

What happens next, is that they try and, like, turn it around on Kobayashi, right? Because they do, yeah. Yeah, Gabriel Boone's like, A, Kaiser-Serze is not real, but this Kobayashi guy is, so we're going to go fuck him up. Yeah, so Kobayashi is going to his office, right, and is ambushed by McManus with a, like, a silenced pistol, because they're all disguised as cleaners. And he, he, like, kidnaps him up to a construction area where they're all waiting. And we get some, again, very, very homoerotic, like, sex and death conflation here. McManus is, like, very horny to kill this guy. Yeah.

This is one of my favorite types of environment that you can find in America is that you've got an office building where there are people at work. But if you keep going up, there's, like, the empty floors that have all the construction stuff on still. That's a great fucking place to do crimes. That's a great place to set your movie. I love that shit. And Pete Posselthwaite is cool as a fucking cucumber. That's a third location. When Gabriel Byrne is like, Kaiser's not real, you're fucking with this.

He's like, oh, he definitely is, big man. Maybe you should go downstairs to my office. And you can ask your girlfriend whether Kaiser Serze is real, because your lawyer girlfriend's in my office right now. And they go, bullshit, you're lying. And he just goes, am I? Yeah, Keaton's like, okay. And there's no further audio.

There's no dialogue at all. it just cuts to them walking him to his office to check. Like, they've all gone with them. And he threatens all of their other loved ones as well. He just has the, like, kind of nearest loved one to them, like, top of mind. So he's like, oh, the fucking dome, too. McManus, I assume he's got, like, a nephew in Utah who I'm going to, like, castrate, which is, I think, the only way to get gender affirming surgery in Utah at this point.

It's like, oh, you've got a fucking uncle in New Mexico? crazy. We've got guys posted up outside your loved one's houses all over the fucking country right now. So I think you will be destroying that cocaine. I think you will be working for Kaiser-Serzee. And by the way, on your way, could you please take care of the bodies of my two guys who are you left in the lift? Thanks very much. Tata. And then he just goes into his office and continues his meeting. Yeah. If someone threatens you with a gun, just walk away. Just get the break and just leave. It's also like as well, we should say that the initial order made pretty clear that this was a suicide mission

in the sense that like... He said, like, Mr. Sozay does not expect all of you to survive but those of you who do will be like handsomely rewarded. Yeah, because if the gang are bringing in $91 million worth of cash to buy this cocaine, destroy the cocaine, steal the cash. That's a lot of people that you've got to kill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like a full GTA for like mission,

even without the cars being on 9-9-99 speed. You know, this is going to be really tough. And actually, they scope out the boat. they scope out the boat and they're like yeah fuck this is a suicide mission we could go in before the other guys arrive with the cash and do it maybe we'd probably still be killed but if we do it before

the money arrives we don't get any fucking money this is the point at which I note that the sniper rifle in Saints Row is named after the character of McManus because of this bit because the way they finesse it right is they just put him on the roof they send Keatonin to kind of

short con people in into a gunfight. Yeah. Verbal, verbal's not really gonna do shit. Verbal's gonna watch the back, right? Like, because he's got like kind of one and a half like functioning legs essentially, right? He's not running anywhere. Yeah.

But he's told to hang back by Keaton. Yeah. This is something he makes sure to tell Kuyang in the interrogation room. He's like, Keaton was just like, hey man, like what are you gonna do in a gunfight? Yeah. You're gonna get killed, just stay out of this. Yeah. girlfriend that I tried. I really tried.

Meantime, meantime, stay here. And by the way, Kevin Spacey, I want you to take the money. I want you to have the money, Kevin Spacey. You're my homie, brother. Yeah. I love you, Kevin Spacey. And he's back, and like, Kuyang is not fucking buying this, like, even slightly. Yeah. No. No. Bowledman has a bunch of guys in his sights, and he says an interesting line at this point. I love this one, yeah. Because he's counting out the number of guys that he has to shoot and then does some kind of like sniper humor, which it's nice to see that there's that kind of, I'm very weak

for like office humor of like, oh, you know, like cardiologists to be like this and I'm clapping my hands like, oh, cool, amazing. But he's like citing up these seven guys and he's like Oswald was a queer or whatever. He says Oswald was a fag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, masculinity in this is like inherently homophobic and violent. He's like, I could kill so many presidents. We'll fucking take them out. No worries. If I was up there, it would have turned out the same. And worse.

Getting combo kills on JFK. But so, do you have a JFK reloaded where you like shoot the driver and the whole limo just veers off and throws everybody out of it? That's the shit he would have been doing. But so, don't worry about it. That didn't happen. Are you sure? I'm referencing there was a video game. It was like hugely.

controversial back in the day called JFK Reloaded, which was like, the JFK assassination simulator. And one of the things you could do, you could do trick shots, you could shoot Jackie O's like hat off, or you could shoot the driver of JFK's limo, which in the finest physics of the 1990s would like spin the entire limo off into the, into Dealey Plaza. Correct me if I'm wrong as well, but wasn't the whole point of this to demonstrate that the shot was impossible or something like that? They were like trying to see if anyone could recreate it. it through the video game.

So, McManus perfectly refreates the J.FK assassination. As we know, official narrative believers, it happened exactly how they said. They attack the boats. Yes. We got a long gunfight here. I like Fenster's MP5. That's cool to me. Yeah, it does rock.

Fenster's dead. Fentster gets killed. Fentster's got, Fentster ran away and then died. Oh, not Fentster. Sorry, Hockney, Hockney, I like Hock's MP5. That's Kevin Pollock, baby. Kevin Pollock finds the cash in a van, and he's like, oh, hobba, hobbit, big crates full of cash. And then he's shot in the back by an unseen assailant.

Whom he turns around to see with his, like, dying breath, and is like, you know, shot. And we see Agent Dave asks Kevin Spacey in the present, like, where were you doing all this? He's like, I just, I froze up. I was scared. Mm-hmm. Which plausible, right? Why wouldn't you be scared? All these guys are getting killed. There's, we see there's one particular guy on the boat who, as it's getting attacked, like, knows he is in the shit as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He is also target-coded. He is a target-coded man, or he's just wearing a bathrobe. The cops in the present day have found this guy's body, which was shot twice in the head and then thrown clear from the boat by the explosion. It says, this guy was being brought in. There was no cocaine on the boat. That was never true. This guy was being brought in and bought by the Argentinian mob for 91 million. dollars because he's the only guy alive who knows who Kaiser Soze is and was going to testify against him with help from this lawyer and from Gabriel Byrne's girlfriend. So that's what this was. It wasn't a Coke deal done wrong.

This was a hit. This is being told to Dave Kuyang by Jack Bear, who has flown all the way in after getting his information. It's like, the guy that you've got in there might be our only lead because this guy knew who at Kaiser Soza. He'd seen his face. this was a hit. And all of this is the perfect amount of information

to convince Kuyen even further that Keaton is Surzee. Yeah, absolutely. Because we see in Flashbackland that the lads search the boat and there's no cocaine on board to destroy. They're like, fuck it, we bail. Gabriel Burns' delivery of There's No Coke.

By the way, by the way, in the course of killing this, in the course of explaining this, we do kill Keaton's girlfriend off screen. She's like, oh yeah, she turned up dead, by the way. Yeah, that's a shame. That's a real shame. And of course, that's how women. are treated in this movie

in general not people the witness the guy who was going to testify against Kaiser is killed by an unseen

assailant so like oh fuck and he calls him Kaiser so like Kaiser Soze is here

on the scene on the bonus yeah and so now it's down to just Gabriel Byrne and Stephen

Baldwin but then Stephen Baldwin like staggers out of the door with a knife in his back and so it's

just Keaton and then of course he is shot in the back yeah in the back and we see Kevin Spacey at the van full of cash, and we see him hide behind like a thing on the

dock as Kaiser Sozee kills Gabriel Byrne and then walks away. Guy says he's on the boat while he's hiding back here. We see this guy in his top hat in his cool crimes outfit, which you have to have. You absolutely have to have. And a gold cigarette lighter. And Kuyen's like, why didn't you, why didn't you shoot him? And this is where Spacey gives us one of the lines of the movie here, which is. which is how do you shoot the devil in the back?

Yeah. What if you miss? Yeah. He was like, I was scared. It's fucking Kaiser Sozier. I wasn't going to open fire on him. My arm do not work. What do you want me to do here?

Mm-hmm. And so verbal sees Kaiser Surze kill Keaton. Mm-hmm. And Coon's completely convinced. He's like, faked his death again. He's like, yeah, obviously, you saw this guy fake his death. So that he could, like, he was sweet on you, man. He wanted, not like, gay, but like, he was, he liked.

he liked you, you know, he wanted you to take the money. He might have been gay, I don't know, hard to say. He was setting you up. He was setting you all up. It was Keaton all along. But more importantly, he was Kaiser Sozay, right? He was fucking, he was putting you on this, like, so that you would tell me this to convince me that he isn't Kaiser Soze.

I've seen through the fucking Matrix. I know he wanted you to be alive to tell me this, but I'm too fucking smart. He's Kaiser Sozay. And you're lying to be, aren't you verbal? And he, like, bullies him into it. Finally, like, kind of tearfully breaking down and going, yeah, it was his. him. He did everything. He did everything. The emeralds, that too.

It was all his idea. But he was my friend. There's no way he can be guys. I was like, I saw him die. I saw him die. He didn't. He lied to you. He wouldn't have betrayed me like that. You've got to cooperate or he's going to get you. And then it looks like, oh, Kevin Space, he might be about to cooperate. And he's like, no, I'm not a rat. I'm going to leave. I'm going to post bail. I'm going to take my chances. And he goes. He goes.

They let him fucking walk out of there. And so, Kuyans just kind of stewing in the. office and he's thinking. And he's thinking... At this point, the Hungarian guy has given a description of Kaiser's face to the police sketch artist and they get this faxed in. And he's fucking... Faxing in.

Ekingly, slowly. Yeah, it's so fucking good. All the time, he had staring at his board and he's going like, oh, oh, fuck me running. And he sees... It's a second for the penny to drop, but all of the, like, bullshit that he was saying, like, when I was in a barbershop quartet and Skokie, Illinois... It's like, when I was... The brand of the whiteboard is quartet.

And it was made in Skokie, Illinois. And it's like seeing that he sees like fucking everyone's names. He sees red foot. He sees all of his shit about Guatemala and coffee beans. He's like, oh, fuck. He drops his coffee mug and realizes that the make of the coffee mug is Kobayashi. Yes. This is all intercut with Kevin Spacey walking the fuck out of that.

And not just walking out of that, but like you see the palsy stops. You see he stops. walking like he starts walking really strongly uh you just see it from like you just see the gold lighter uh-huh and gets into a car kukyans like chasing him outside at this point gets into a jaguar driven by pete p p p pothelthwaite who is wearing brown face in real life he doesn't say anything so we never established whether his accent is like real or not or what the fuck his deal was but his face is at least real yeah the brown face is right that's that's that's that's pitt I don't know.

Yeah. Odd aspect that that's real. Yeah. And Kuyen is just like left standing outside the police station completely lost. Yeah. None of it was real. It was all bullshit. The fucking face stops coming through the fucking facts and it's exactly Kevin Spacey.

It's a really bad drawing of Kevin Spacey. A perfect drawing of Kevin Spacey. So what we learned is that Kevin Spacey did the crimes, but he got away with it. Yeah. What we learned is is really difficult to make criminal... difficult to make criminal charges stick on Kevin Spacing. And you can try, you can investigate him for years. And he was acquitted of all charges.

And a lot of people, you know, turned up dead who were going to maybe like change that. Dr. Plummer. It's like if testifying against Kevin Spacey can be really bad for your health. Mm-hmm. Which is, uh-huh. In this movie, yeah. I don't love that Kevin Spacey has an entire career between this House of Cards and LA Confidential of playing the, like, the Sigma criminal.

I mean, it's not really the same in LA Confidential, but like still, yeah. Yeah, there's a remarkable amount of crime movies that have Kevin Spacey and them from this era. The guy who just, like, figured out how to get away with the crimes because of how smart he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you don't, you don't ever like to see an actor take roles to their head like that. Like, it's, apart from the mail, it's just really gauche. Just the Christmas message thing, you uploaded to YouTube after you're going. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my time.

With the Queen Elizabeth mug? Genuinely, it's just, what the fuck was any of that character? No criminal wrongdoing. No, just doing the, doing the accents, being like, they call me Mr. acquitted of all charges. No criminal wrongdoing fucked up vibes. Yeah, yeah, nobody wants to worry with you because they think you're weird, but like, maybe we'll get out Kevin Spacey really here,

facilitation arc in a few years. Oh, he's trying. He was at Cannes just like on his own. Has he become Christian yet? Like, is out on that. No, no, no. That's not the pivot he's doing. The pivot he was in a biopic about Franyo Tushman, the first prime minister of a president

of an independent Croatia. And he was doing the European film route. Yeah. He's done some like art stuff in France and then he's also just showed up at Cannes just to be like, Hey, Kevin Spacey here, not here with anyone or promoting anything. I'm just around. It's weird with these people. They just kind of like try and just like creep back into things

and requires constant vigilance, you know? Repercussions don't seem to exist for media celebrities, even when it's proven. So Mr. acquitted of all charges, I imagine we'll see so much more of him. Oh, God. For the usual suspects too. Yeah.

They'll be a kind of a necro sequel to this. That'll be a difficult one to hit. I bet you they'll try. Somebody will be trying to write usual suspects too. someone right now is trying to write the usual suspects too and it's me I'm happy to announce with Nebula no I'm kidding I've got Kevin Spacey written down

and then crossed out and then written down again and then crossed out and then written down on a whiteboard but like am I going to do this but we don't we don't have I guess the discussion that I want to pull up here is to what degree is any of what we've just seen real even slightly well

Pete Possible Thwait is in brown face Pete Possilthwaite is in brown face he's not called Kobayashi because that's the mug The Keaton thing, I think, is the most easily fictionalized bit, right? Like, the whole narrative of like tenderness there. Yeah, it's definitely being talked up massively by verbal, I would say. Like, Guyan is obviously, he's our only guy pushing back against this, and he's established to be extremely biased against Keating.

But I do believe that he has some amount of the truth to it, that like, this man is a cold-blooded killer. There's no way that he was hesitating throughout the whole second heist. Maybe he did know something about the New York's finest taxi company, you know? Like, it's all possible, right? Yeah. We don't know. We don't know because it's, it's, it's, it's just like,

this tale that we've been spun, entertaining, though it is. What it says about masculinity on the other hand, whispers, but we are absolutely equipped to fucking say what this says about masculinity. I think this says more about masculinity than, like, a lot of other heist movies try to, is the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, because it has a real, uh, kind of like vision of a criminal fraternity, right, uh, that has a violent, homo-social, homoerotic masculinity. Homophobic, too.

Yes, absolutely. Masculatured is when you and the boys are compelled to be homocial, homophobic, and violent. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The three homos. Which like, yeah. The original title with his podcast as well. Yes.

Yes. That's pretty good. Pretty good. That's going to be the art for Western season with us on the poster for the three Amigos as well. Yeah. Yes. All right.

Yeah. I'll do Western season just to have that art, mate. Yeah. I'm willing to fucking do. But yeah, so like women, women exist as like objects of violence transactionally. Sometimes they have lines, one of them has a line, last line. I guess so. A cop is a kind of like animal, which is fun.

That is, I appreciate the kind of content for cops that this movie has. But that's like, those are the things that are kind of mostly defined by. And again, I come back to this idea that like, and verbal is sort of lying, right? when he says that you can't change who you are, you can't change your nature, because of course that's what he's been doing, the whole movie. And I like that it positions this as like, oh, this is like a kind of precept of masculinity. It's just like, you know, once a thief, always a thief, you can't change. And that is textually a lie told to exploit the person it's being told to.

That's not, you know, being done in a feminist way, right? But it does mean verbal uses all of the kind of artifact of masculinity so much to his own advantage across this movie. He exploits like Keaton's pity for him. He exploits everyone else's kind of contempt for his disability by making himself invisible with it and by just kind of like tagging along by being the person who plans. It's also notable as well that the masculinity in this is always contingent and there is always always the option. of being called a woman, being compared to a woman, being sort of like invalidated in some way like that. Like they call each other ladies whenever they're fighting.

It ties with the kind of homoeroticism as well as it's a really insecure thing that like the like homosexuality alluded to as contested as like a kind of a struggle between a masculine and a feminine for dominance. Like this is... Part of what gives verbal the edge is that he's able to see. these patterns and exploit them. Yeah. Being the one person who is

slightly less homophobic in your friend group allows you superpowers, essentially. Yeah, basically. I think it's specifically like the opening scene where Kuyang is just literally yelling at fucking verbal. He's like, I am smarter than you, I am better than you, I'm going to work this out here.

And like that is something that verbal has like set in motion personally. It's not just a renunciation, but an exploitation of these kind of forms of masculinity. in order to do a kind of more effective kind of violence, which is interesting to me. I think it's a little bit subversive in that way.

It's also interesting that the tale that he tells about Kaiser Soze, the shots we see of Kaiser Sozay and the flashback is like this massive, like, broad, muscle-bound, long-haired, Turkish guy. Who is willing to commit violence against women. And that's part of the legend, that how, like, he talks him up. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't care about his family.

In fact, he's willing to, like, sacrifice his own family for the chance to do more violence. Kaiser-Sorza's his masculine archetype. And this, like, clearly excites Dave, the davely agent, because he's like, well, I'll prove myself by taking down this big, tough guy. And therefore, he's looking for a big, tough masculine guy, not for the little guy in front of it. So what I mean to say is this movie is, like, yes, it's very misogynistic,

but in a surprisingly subversive way. I think there is something here that we can kind of, like, say, this is, this is interesting, right? Yeah, definitely you can sometimes slightly reproduce the thing that you are trying to critique, and it will still be kind of good. Yeah, you just have to sort of have the, like, have the, like, rug pull at the last moment. But we don't, we don't have to be subjective about these things, because we don't have a science-based system. It's called the scum system. It stands for smaum, cultural insensitivity, unprovoked violence and misogyny. How smarmy is the usual suspect? It's very pleased with itself, isn't it?

It's high. It has to be high. It does delight in that reveal at the end. Oh, yeah, no, that's, you can tell. That's the orgasm after fucking jerking for the entire goddamn movie. It's just, it's all intercut. They like play back flashbacks of things everyone has said. And like, it's the whole thing is building to that. It's very masturbatory.

Just as kind of, you know, a technical distinction. The S here, I mean, sometimes it's acting, but it may as well stand for screenplay, to be honest. Like, how pleased is the screenplay with itself? And the answer here is extremely. Yeah, I'd be pleased with myself, too, if I was going to win an Oscar, but. Well, yeah, it does, it does earn it, right? But it's not, the question isn't, it's not unearned scour, uh, unearned, um, it's just smart, right? Like, it's, you can be, you can be smart me and be good at something.

I mean, lawyers exist, right? So, like, I don't go like six, five, I would go six. I would comfortably go six for this. Death? Yeah, no, happily, happily. Cool. Cultural insensitivity, textual brown face. Oh, yes, that's very true.

That is brown face. Yeah, what the fuck is going on with that guy? Didn't need to be that. I mean, I get that it's there as a kind of kick towards making this up as you go along out of stuff you see in front of me. Or is that something they said after the fact when they were like, when people were like, why'd you do that? But it's not making it up as we go along because we see that that guy is real. That's true. That is true.

If Redfoot had been in Brownface, which was something I was worried about hearing that his name was Redfoot, like, I was worried, but that was something was going to be happening. Yeah. That would have made much more sense because Redfoot is entirely fabricated. Kobayashi, just his name appears to be. Like, I guess we know he works with Kaiser Sozay in some way. We don't necessarily know that he's a lawyer, but he does all of this shit for him. Got an Indian homie named Kobayashi. Yeah.

I mean, for all we know, Kevin's basically getting the car at the end, and he goes, Holy shit, you're real! Oh, they don't say anything to each other. I'm just like, oh, fuck! I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand.

Kobe Ashley is the fucking key to this. When we get Kobe Ashley, it's really going to all fall into place. He's also, like... Why does he sound like that? Yeah, off the top of my head, I don't think there are any people of color in this film at all. Am I wrong about that? I don't think I am.

Well, Jean-Compisito is in it. Oh, John Carlos, Esposito, of course. Although he's in it for like two scenes. Yeah. So that in itself is not great. This is a question that we may need to cut from the podcast. Is Benicio del Toro white? No.

Long thread. No. Chas Parmateria's Italian? Italian? Okay, right. Okay, so the movie, it's not the most diverse. It's not phenomenally diverse, boys. It does Benicio del Toro kind of wrong.

It doesn't use Giancalo as position. Zuto nearly enough, but, you know, they didn't know what they had. Yeah, I'm glad that, I'm glad that Benicio del Toro made his mark on this. That is really funny. Yeah. It sucks that he had to do it himself, but like, yeah. I respect that as an act, there's a kind of a gudsy acting decision. I don't know.

It invokes a lot of, like, international crime of like, you know, Argentinians and Turks and, kind of Guatemans and stuff. And the kind of like nuclear weapons thing in Pakistan. but it's just to provide like exotic flavor which is yeah true yeah I would give this like four I'd go four I'd say yeah okay yeah unprovoked violence so this movie is it's about how cool it is to outsmart someone really yeah it does show Kaiser Serze triumphing violently but it is kind of out of like intellect rather than force of will right which is I don't know that's true that's true. It does, and in that

subversive way, you highlighted, undercut the, like, usual depiction of masculinity being, like, violent and cool. If anything, the kind of, like, violent gung-ho masculinity of the other characters is shown to work against them. Yeah. It's, like, I have a way of doing this that doesn't

involve killing anyone. That's the kind of superior kind. That's the thing that wins over the sort of the brutish, you know? When Kaiser-Serzee reveals himself, he stops limping, which sucks, and we'll talk about that. But, like, like it doesn't he doesn't like rip off his entire face and become someone more handsome than Kevin Spacey right like he's he's still the like alarmingly bald Kevin Spacey looking

motherfucker right which um which I appreciate I I don't know this is a really difficult one to quantify I would say yeah a lot of the people that they commit violence against in the course of the heists are people who are like crooks I mean I guess the jeweler the jeweler is just doing Oh, no, he was carrying a bunch of heroin. But then again, you know, they shouldn't get the death sentence for that. Yeah, it's, I don't know. Yeah. Those two body guards were just doing their job.

Arguably, we can read in that Sergei is the one who prefers the New York's finest taxi service heist to go off without killing anyone. Mm-hmm. That is shown as a positive thing. That's shown as a, like, an ideal to these guys is... But then he's very willing to kill the jeweler. But he's using that cynically to get... Keaton to stop being straight.

He's he has no problem killing in the next tis. In fact, he does it with no hesitation whatsoever. I don't, I don't know what the violence score. I don't know. Let's give it a question mark. Two with a question mark. Let's say that. Two, but it's in italics.

Really? I do think that the movie wants us to enjoy and be excited by the violence. And I do think, like that jeweler and those two bodyguards did not, did not deserve to go out the way they did. We don't know if they went out the way they did, is the thing. I guess the whole thing is alive. He's telling that story to a cop to excite. Well, yeah, I guess we have to.

Oh, yeah, fuck, you're right. He is telling this. He's just trying to ply Kuyang with this, because, like, we know that Redfoot is entirely made up. So, like, how do we know that the second height even happened? The movie does want us to think that violence is cool. That, that is true. I think it was Korean to think the violence is cool.

I wonder. Yeah. We, the audience are meant to be excited and enjoy that by it. I wonder about McMannis's race. I wonder about McMannis's racist hat in that bit, because when he kills those two guys, he's wearing a hat with the Confederate flag on it. And I'm like, is that of a time in 1995 when you're meant to be like, hmm, this seems like not a great guy. This is more of a kind of a waingrower line situation, right?

Because I mean, here's the thing. Like, I, one of the only, like, well, no, I don't know. Let's split the difference and say three. Okay. I think that's generous, but all right. Okay. The thing is that we need, we need to find a way to ding this fucker for the abelism, right? We do. We do. And it's not misogyny and it's not cultural insensitivity, but like... Do you want to chuck an extra point on cultural insensitivity?

Yeah, I think so. Let's talk about it now and then add some points to cultural and sensitivity. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about it first. Sure. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, or a performance of a disability in order to exploit others, in order to, to, to, to make himself, appear weak so that they will underestimate him or so that they will pity him, right?

Which is portrayed as a failing on their part, but a failure of cunning, right, rather than, because like Keaton empathizes with him, it's in a kind of a patronizing way, right? Which in itself, again, subversive, I kind of like that, but like it is something for which he is punished, right? And the kind of like textual closeness between Keaton and Soze, if we do read that as being real, then maybe that's something that's even like rewarded a little bit to be like, you know, this is the one guy who is like nice too verbal. But at the same time, it is like, we're showing that performance as being a smart but wicked thing to do, right? But wicked in a kind of cool way. Oh, he was pretending to be disabled to trick people.

That makes sense. That's smart of him to do. Because that's how evil Kaiser-Serze is, but evil in a cool way, right? Yes. It's, yeah, no matter what... It's casting doubt on anyone who has a disability just from the offset, right? Like... I say we give it an extra point for that.

I agree, but it's definitely... It's hitting some of the same notes as the prestige there as well. We also usually put homophobia under cultural insensitivity. That's true, that's true. Culture and sensitive is kind of our catch-all for... Yeah. In that case, we've got to bump it up to like five then, don't we? We're already on five if we're including the ableism. So now let's talk about homophobia, of which there is a lot. I think the homophobia is

subversive in the sense that all of these guys are meatheads who do get killed over it. And it's also meant to be kind of like relational in a way that makes you feel good about these guys. Like, there are no gay people in this movie textually. It's like, this is a bonding activity. This is a fun bonding activity between straight men that is fun and funny to watch, right? Which is homophobic, sure. So, I mean, go with a six then, I guess. Yeah, I'm happy with that.

Wow, that's a lot of movement within the scum system. Okay. And now misogyny. Misogyny is also got to be high. Yeah, I'm afraid so. By the same token as making a movie about like kind of homo-social men, you got to exclude all the women from it, and women are only kind of referenced in terms of like something a man can be as a form of weakness or as like kind of plot elements that can be threatened, crucially, or killed. Playing devil's advocate, it is legit to make a movie about dudes. You could do that.

You can't know that it's possible And this movie is in a way about the dudes And questioning whether they rock You know Not everything has to be about women Master of Command didn't have any women in it That's true That is true

That's true That's a little bit There was You could sense women in the absence I guess But yeah I'm just I'm not super happy with the way

In which our lawyer characters dispose of off screen I'm not phenomenally happy About the sort of The general sense that you can be in a straight relationship, but if your wife makes more money than you, that's kind of gay, that's like a sort of being gay. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

The, like, even if they are entirely fictional, which we're kind of led to believe that they are, Kaiser Serzai's wife and daughter, right, existing as like objects of kind of sexual victimization in order to bolster his violent masculinity, just in a slightly non-traditional way of like, well, this is a kind of like liability, this is a vulnerability to me, so I'm just going to kill them. That's misogynistic, obviously. So five, four. I go five, I would say. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. So error on the side of higher rather than lower. That gives it a total score of 20. I think it's a complex 20. I agree. Approximately four top carpers.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing. It might be a morally worse movie. Or one, Ocean's 11. It's a more, it's a more interesting movie. I think that there's, there's scope for some real, like, investigation of what this means here. So, like, if you've got, like, film students in the audience, like,

just should I have a think? Yeah, it's a good, science-based system is so interesting. Your dad loves this. Yeah. And he's right. We can tell you that this movie is exactly as good as, Johnny English. Yeah.

Yeah, that tracks. That's exactly right. Yeah. Johnny Turkish, if you will. Johnny Turkish. I said earlier on, I thought Zardos is better than this. I really, I really do. Yeah.

We never scummed Zardos because that was a bonus. We got through this whole bit without doing a Turkish prison joke as well, which we did. We did scum Zardos. We never did. Well, do we have any, any, any, any, any Kronsteins, any good nights to award here? Do they want go above and beyond in the pursuit of villainy? goodness. I mean, Kaiser Serse, but like... Not massively.

No. I don't think so. Maybe to Kobayashi, I don't know. I'm not rewarding Kobayashi for whatever the fuck he's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what he's getting on with, but... Yeah. I could do it without my assent.

I don't think so. I think we just, we have the scum, and that's what it is. So... Yeah, bang it. In memoriam, fenster. That's right. Oh, Iak, Kuiwale. That was the usual suspect.

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