here go: (thing) by Semisane -- everything2.com (all of The Usual Suspects, there are 2 more in this node)
While I was punching holes in legal documents for purposes of Cerlox binding, I realized that there is a significant flaw in the plot of one of my favourite movies: The Usual Suspects. hmm it's not what I'd call a flaw. either the writer has a good answer to this confusion or the whole plot makes no sense.
The whole plot hinges, of course, around one massive unknown fact: a fact that is revealed gloriously in the end. Now, the reason for which Kaiser launched the operation against the boat with the Hungarians was to kill the one man, Arturro Marquez, who could identify him. Then, through brilliant storytelling, he seemingly escapes from the police. The drama of the final scene is heightened by the sudden, crushing realisation of the duped detective that he has been tricked. Now, there are two possibilities. One: Kaiser didn't care whether he could be identified by the police or not. In this scenario, it makes no sense for him to go through all the trouble of killing the one man who can identify him. If, then, as the second scenario requires, he does want to remain anonymous, he has failed. The police now have a description from the Hungarian who was nearly burned to death and the information from Dave Kujan's (the detective from US Customs) revelation. The ending seems to be this brilliant moment of cleverness winning out - a classic clever villain escapes his captors film - but in the end, Kaiser has failed to achieve what he set out to do. He was about to be released before he told anything to Kujan, the customs agent, and would therefore have probably gotten away with everything. His cover was good enough that the sketch from the Hungarian probably wouldn't have been enough to finger him.
The obvious objection to this line of reasoning is Kaiser's statement about vanishing and never been heard of again. Of course, if that had been his plan, Marquez would have been irrelevant. right. weird. what was the writer thinking? Moreover, there would have been no reason to tell his story at all: he could have just walked and disappeared.