Daft though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can be, The Usual Suspects<\/em> scribe Christopher McQuarrie and The Crying Game<\/em>\u2019s Neil Jordan won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, and The Sixth Sense<\/em>\u2019s M. Night Shyamalan was nominated in that category. And it wasn\u2019t like they were honored solely for their respective twists, despite marketing campaigns that weren\u2019t exactly shy about reminding voters of the power of said shock value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To overcome that potentially limiting reputation, the writer\/directors and McQuarrie (in tandem with Usual Suspects <\/em>helmer Bryan Singer) layer their films with elements that aren\u2019t reliant on such tricks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Foremost, all three films hit their respective genre beats in reverential, influential, and inventive fashion. Arguably the foremost ghost story of the past 25 years, The Sixth Sense <\/em>dishes out its well-timed scares efficiently and sparingly to bolster their effectiveness. The walking corpses that preteen dead-seer Cole (Haley Joel Osment) encounters don\u2019t pop out at him for cheap thrills. Instead, their magnetic draw toward his supernatural gifts yields a more organic presence, and the lingering carnage that Shyamalan and his makeup crew craft result in terrifying imagery far more memorable than a quick \u201cboo\u201d from your run-of-the-mill demon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Celebrating its 30th anniversary in late November, The Crying Game <\/em>and its accelerated bond between ex-IRA volunteer Fergus (Stephen Rea) and British hairstylist Dil (Jaye Davidson) is easily one of the great romances of those three decades. The chemistry between the two actors and the secrets their characters harbor combine to form an atypical yet convincing connection on par with far more conventional love connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, few modern crime tales are as compelling as The Usual Suspects<\/em>\u2019 shadily orchestrated assemblage of five veteran cons that leads to a series of increasingly dangerous jobs. In his sophomore feature effort, Singer stages tight, gritty heist scenes with the confidence of someone well into their career, and shepherds career-best performances from an ensemble of top character actors, including Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, Benicio Del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite, and in one of the mid-\u201990s roles that vaulted him to a leading man, Kevin Spacey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fraught camaraderie between these cops and robbers as they deliver McQuarrie\u2019s sizzling dialogue is a pleasure to return to, and the same goes with the work by Osment, Toni Collette, and Olivia Williams in The Sixth Sense<\/em>, and Rea, Davidson, Jim Broadbent, Forest \u201cSure That\u2019s a British Accent?\u201d Whitaker, and Miranda Richardson in The Crying Game<\/em>. The lone superstar of the bunch is Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense<\/em>, yet as child psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe, he\u2019s granted an opportunity by Shyamalan to show a dramatic depth that had only been hinted at in his previous work. Making good on that trust, Willis gives one of the most nuanced, memorable turns on his rather loud CV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In their individual permutations, these players form relationships that viewers care about, enacting various degrees of sensationalized (i.e. cinematically worthy) plots that nevertheless involve relatable dynamics. Young outcast Cole sensing a connection with Malcolm that could change both of their lives for the better, or enjoying the brief glee of being speedily pushed through a grocery store parking lot in shopping cart by his beleaguered mother Lynn (Collette); The Usual Suspects<\/em>\u2019 united quintet tossing out good-natured ribbings; Fergus and his captive British soldier Jody (Whitaker) shedding the man-made limitations of nationalities and seeing each other as simpatico humans \u2014 these are intelligently crafted bonds, firmly rooted in reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But strong as the writing, filmmaking, and performances are, the power of the twists can\u2019t be ignored, and the build-ups to them remain intriguing. There\u2019s a particular joy in looking for \u201ctells\u201d by characters who are privy to the as-yet-undisclosed information, as well as other clues that the writers and directors weave in \u2014 especially Shyamalan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The extent to which the filmmakers play fair and resist introducing any tricks beyond the well-established rules of each story\u2019s world is similarly impressive, with The Sixth Sense<\/em>\u2019s meticulous code again leading the way despite its supernatural bent. While there\u2019s a certain suspension of disbelief in all three films regarding uninformed characters who are \u201cfooled\u201d along the way, they\u2019re all sympathetic in their temporary illusions, which makes their plights all the more tragic and, in turn, emotionally rich for us viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps most importantly, however, none of the films live or die by their twists. Thanks to the above factors, these are simply good, if not great movies that also have one big, unexpected turn that differentiates them from the bulk of their contemporaries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While the eleventh hour placement of the epiphanies in The Sixth Sense <\/em>and The Usual Suspects <\/em>significantly alters one\u2019s understanding of the preceding events, an engaging yarn has already been told by that point, transforming the jolt into icing on an already delicious cake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/crying-game-1024x576.jpg\")
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