The Usual Suspect - John Swift

The first thing that we see is a close up of matches being lit and the main character lighting his cigarette, this helps to build enigma straight away as he lights all of the matches instead of just one almost as if he doesn’t care anymore. We then see a medium shot which allows us to see some of the surroundings of the location, from the cleverly use of mise en scene with things such as creates, thick rope, and metal we can tell this is a boat.

He then drops his matches onto the ground which ignites a flame, a series of close-ups are then used to emphasize the dance of the flame as it moves passed the camera, and on some shots the camera tilts down to get closer to it. This has been used as fire is icon for danger.

The camera shots have been carefully chosen which only shows the second characters face, this automatically leaves the viewer wondering who this man is.

We see a close-up of the second characters body but cannot see his face this creates a lot of enigma and we know that this must be the “bad guy”. The first characters body language seems lazy and almost has he has given up.

The scene is poorly lit which also creates enigma as we can’t really  see what is going on, we can just about make out the chatterers ans what is taking place in the scene.

We ten see a close-up of the gun; this is iconic for its danger as we know they are capable of killing, this is all done by the director create mood and add to the idea that the first character is in a lot of danger.

We then go on to see a long shot of the boat where we just hear a gun shot, we know this is the character with the gun shooting the other character as they are also on a boat, the shots are also connected with a sound bridge of an eerie string sounding instrument.