The plot follows the interrogation of Roger "Verbal" Kint, a small-time con man, who is one of only two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles.

Through flashback and narration, Kint tells an interrogator a convoluted story of events that led him and his criminal companions to the boat, and of a mysterious crime lord—known as Keyser Söze—who controlled them.

The next day, the police recover 27 bodies and only two survivors: Arkosh Kovash ("Ákos Kovács"), a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns; and Roger "Verbal" Kint, a physically disabled con artist.

The men are left alone in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin while FBI agent Jack Baer visits a hospitalized Kovács.

Six weeks earlier in New York City, Keaton and Verbal are arrested alongside fellow criminals Michael McManus, Fred Fenster and Todd Hockney and placed in a police lineup as suspects in a truck hijacking that none of them admits to participating in.

Shortly after, the men learn that the job was arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi, who claims to be a representative of Keyser Söze—a mysterious Turkish crime lord who passed into legend after killing his own family while they were held hostage by his Hungarian rivals.

Having vanished after killing his family and massacring his rivals, Söze supposedly only conducts business from the shadows via his underlings, most of whom are unaware that they work for him.

Kobayashi tells the men that Söze arranged for their arrests in New York after they attracted his attention by unwittingly stealing from him, but he is willing to spare their lives in exchange for them destroying a shipment of $91 million worth of cocaine being brought to San Pedro Bay by Argentinian drug dealers to be sold to a Hungarian gang.

At the conclusion of Verbal's flashback, he and his companions attack the ship and kill numerous Argentinian and Hungarian gangsters before discovering that there is no cocaine onboard.

Kujan learns that the prisoner killed on the ship was Arturo Marquez, a smuggler who escaped prosecution by claiming that he could identify Söze.

Armed with this information, Kujan deduces that Keaton was actually Keyser Söze: he organized the assault on the boat as a pretext for assassinating Marquez and faking his death.

Moments later, Kujan realizes that Verbal fabricated his entire story, improvising on the spot by piecing together details from random items in Rabin's cluttered office.

[11] Spacey had been encouraged by a number of people he knew who had seen it,[8] and was so impressed that he told Singer and his screenwriting partner Christopher McQuarrie, that he wanted to be in whatever film they did next.

Singer read a column in Spy magazine called "The Usual Suspects" after Claude Rains' line in Casablanca.

[12] Söze's character is based on John List, a New Jersey accountant who murdered his family in 1971 and then disappeared for almost two decades, assuming a new identity before he was ultimately apprehended.

[17] Singer described the film as Double Indemnity meets Rashomon, and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time.

"[18] He also compared the film's structure to Citizen Kane (which also contained an interrogator and a subject who is telling a story) and the criminal caper The Anderson Tapes.

[19] McQuarrie and Singer had a difficult time getting the film made because of the non-linear story, the large amount of dialogue and the lack of cast attached to the project.

Financiers wanted established stars, and offers for the role of Agent Dave Kujan went out to Christopher Walken, Tommy Lee Jones, Jeff Bridges, Charlie Sheen, James Spader, Al Pacino and Johnny Cash.

"[14] To research his role, Spacey met doctors and experts on cerebral palsy and talked with Singer about how it would fit dramatically in the film.

[8] According to Byrne, by the next day Singer still did not have all of the footage that he wanted, and refused to stop filming in spite of the bonding company's threat to shut down the production.

The scene was originally to have Redfoot flick the cigarette at McManus's chest, but the actor missed and hit Baldwin's face by accident.

[26] However, Kevin Pollak, in a 2018 episode of his podcast Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, told another version of the story involving Spacey engaging in sexual acts with Singer's young French boyfriend with only several days left in the production, which disrupted filming and led to a bitter ruination of their relationship.

Word of mouth marketing was used to advertise the film, and buses and billboards were plastered with the simple question, "Who is Keyser Söze?

The site's consensus reads, "Expertly shot and edited, The Usual Suspects gives the audience a simple plot and then piles on layers of deceit, twists, and violence before pulling out the rug from underneath.

[35] Roger Ebert, in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, writing that it was confusing and uninteresting: "To the degree that I do understand, I don't care.

[37] USA Today rated the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "one of the most densely plotted mysteries in memory—though paradoxically, four-fifths of it is way too easy to predict.

[61] In August 2016, James Charisma of Paste ranked The Usual Suspects among Kevin Spacey's greatest film performances.