Film Analysis Essay: The Usual Suspects

Introduction

Form and content are two distinct but interrelated aspects that make up a film. A right combination of the two elements provides an excellent environment for filmmakers to create scenes that adequately present explicit and implicit meaning of film's scenes. This paper analyzes the documentary the Usual Suspects and describes the difference between content and form, as well as, implicit and explicit meaning as evident in the film. More importantly, it represents the film's genre

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Content refers to the work created to provide the target audience with information. It includes podcasts, photos, videos, blog posts and infographics. Content provides the viewer with information about a particular topic. The film's content depicts how people interact, information about filmmakers and their brand. Contrarily, form refers to the way content is organized such as its structure and immediate environment where it is presented from. The form of a film determines the extent that the audience feels compelled to engage in the movie.

In one of the scenes of the movie The Usual Suspects, the suspects arrive wearing the tags on their clothes that read "This year's Reservoir Dogs." In a cinematic move, the filmmaker endeavors to reveal the significant assertiveness and reputation of the suspect. This helps in advancing their identity as hardcore criminals who should naturally command submission and respect. There is ample manipulation of both space and time as happenings in two different places are shown simultaneously where on one end, car tires screeching, sirens hooting, car doors opening, feet pounding on the pavement as on the other end, Dean Keaton is shown moving into the darkness.

Parallel editing is used when the viewer is shown what is going on with two different characters in two distinct locations at different times where the ex-cop Dean Keaton remerges and heads straight to assume his preoccupation as a flamboyant businessman while he keeps switching roles to become the interrogator of the five suspects. Patterns develop in the film where there is an intense interrogation between the cop and the suspects where one of the suspects succumbs to the regular acts of hostility, threats, promises, friendliness, reconciliations, and bust-ups. All these happen in a particular pattern to show the viewer the difficulty that the cop goes through in obtaining information crucial for evidence.

In a film, explicit meaning refers to the consequence of what has been openly shown or told to audience onscreen or on the surface and is mostly presented in a plot summary style. On the contrary, implicit meaning attempts to convey a less obvious and arguably meaning of the message relayed from the film.

Explicitly, the film is about five people wrongfully arrested and brought for questioning and together plan for revenge against the police whose operation is successful their payback for wronging Soze leaves 27 dead men in a boat explosion. The underlying or implicit meaning of the film is the effects of a broken judicial system and rogue police departments in propagating crime. The usual suspects are wrongfully arrested and later released, but they hold some grudges against the law enforcement officers. Therefore, they intend to plan revenge, and this situation eventually results in unexpected injuries.

The Usual Suspects is a thriller genre but it can also be considered as an outright action movie because it is full of thriller hallmarks including a chase game between the authorities and a protagonist in a sort of cat and mouse play, wounded heroes, a mystery of truck hijack in New York and a concerted, well-worked-out spiral of events by the hero to have them give incriminating evidence against themselves.

There were many traditional conventional events and actions in the film just like in other movies. These include a helicopter chase, gunfights, explosions, physical fights and betrayal among other conventions. There is ample innovation that separates the film from other traditional films in the genre, and this encompasses the consistent presence of music and a precise connection of the music to various moods and actions in the movie. Inversion is also used in the last scenes of the film where flames are portrayed as overly hot-red and cover a relatively large area. Principally, this sends presents the image of imminent death of the twenty-seven men in the film.

Conclusion

In conclusion, active form and content synchronization in a film can make the audience to better understand the movie. Similarly, innovation in the film delivery is essential in ensuring that the movie stands out from the rest. It is also essential to include conventional approaches in the film to maintain film's genre characteristics.