Editing The Usual Suspects (section)

== Plot ==
While lying badly wounded on a ship docked in [[San Pedro Bay (California)|San Pedro Bay]], career criminal Dean Keaton is approached by a shadowy figure whom he calls "Keyser," who shoots him dead and sets fire to the ship. 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. [[U.S. Customs]] agent Dave Kujan flies to [[Los Angeles]] from [[New York City]] to interrogate Verbal. 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. In an extended flashback, Verbal relates the events that led him, Keaton and their associates onto the ship.

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. As the five bond in the police station's holding cell, McManus proposes that they pull a heist to get revenge on the [[NYPD]]. Trying to go straight, Keaton initially refuses but eventually agrees to help rob a jewel smuggler being escorted by corrupt cops, netting millions in emeralds, and getting over fifty cops arrested after leaking their activities to the press. They then go to [[California]] to [[fence (criminal)|fence]] the jewels through a man named Redfoot, who connects them with another jewel heist. The heist goes badly, and they're forced to kill their target, who is revealed to be carrying synthetic heroin. 

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. To most of the criminal underworld, he is a fearsome [[urban legend]], with most unsure whether he truly exists.

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. Though initially reluctant to take the job, they relent after Fenster is killed while attempting to flee, and after Kobayashi threatens their loved ones when they attempt to ambush him in his office.

During Kujan's interrogation, he learns that there was no cocaine on the ship, and Söze was seen on board. At the hospital, Baer learns that Kovács has seen Söze, and has a sketch artist begin drawing a picture of him. 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. An unseen assailant kills Hockney, McManus, Keaton and a prisoner in one of the ship's cabins. The mysterious figure then sets fire to the ship as Verbal looks on from a hiding place on the dock.

Kujan learns that the prisoner killed on the ship was Arturo Marquez, a smuggler who escaped prosecution by claiming that he could identify Söze. Rather than dealing cocaine, the Argentinians were actually planning to sell Marquez—the only man who could identify Söze—to his rivals. He also learns that Marquez was represented by lawyer Edie Finneran, Keaton's girlfriend, who was recently murdered. 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. Verbal finally confesses that Keaton was behind everything, but refuses to testify in court. Verbal's bail is posted, and he is released.

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. Verbal walks outside, losing his limp and flexing his supposedly disabled hand. As Kujan pursues Verbal, a fax arrives at the police station with the sketch artist's [[facial composite]] of Söze, which resembles Verbal. Moments before Kujan arrives on the scene, Verbal enters a car driven by "Kobayashi" and leaves.