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Hollywood sees the year of Kevin Spacey

"The Usual Suspects" is a film that engulfs its viewer in a tightly knit web of intrigue, lies and murder. It is a movie that is at once startling and exciting; a feast for the senses, a stimulant for the mind.

Most of the story of "The Usual Suspects" -- new on home video this week -- is told through the testimony given to police by Verbal Kint, a crippled street hustler. His narration is the backbone of this intricate and fascinating movie. While this fact may be attributed to the crafty screenwriting of Christopher McQuarrie or to the innovative direction of young auteur Bryan Singer, the real reason that the many pieces of this film fit together is the outstanding performance of the man who plays Verbal.

He is Kevin Spacey.

Upon first glance at "The Usual Suspects," we may easily recognize the sinister babyface of Spacey, who has acted in over 15 films in nine years. We may recall him as a suburban husband in "Consenting Adults" (1992), or as a strict real estate speculations manager in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992), or, more recently, as an obnoxious man held hostage with the rest of his family by con Denis Leary in "The Ref" (1993). These films introduced us to this skilled and eerily lovable actor. And in 1995, he broke out.

So it was appropriate that our first major exposure to Spacey this year came in the film "Outbreak," which was released last March. Here, Spacey plays a member of a special team of government doctors sent to combat a horrifying outbreak of a contagious virus in a small California town.

Playing opposite such Hollywood powerhouses as Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland and Rene Russo, Spacey stood out as an independent and somewhat free-wheeling bounty hunter of sorts who ultimately succumbs to the invisible killer he hunts. It is not a glamorous role, and we should not have expected that Spacey, a relative unknown in the shadow of his costars, would emerge from this movie with the most successful year of all. But he did.

Earlier in the year, Spacey landed a lead role in the satire of an aspiring screenwriter's (Frank Whalley) venture into Hollywood, "Swimming with Sharks." As an insulting and materialistic producer, Spacey showed that his best abilities probably lay with his portrayals of cruel or unfriendly men.

But, while acting with his "Suspects" co-star, Benicio Del Toro, he was not able to convince us that he could carry a film to box office success. The movie failed and Spacey returned to the supporting roles which he had been accustiomed to for so long. This, however, may have been the best turn-of-events the actor could have wanted.

After all, the parts in "Outbreak" and "The Usual Suspects" (for which he is predicted to receive a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination) followed quickly on the tail of his "Sharks" glitch. Both of these films established Spacey as someone who could be more than just a powerless supporting character to greater stars like Al Pacino in "Glengarry" or Kevin Kline in "Consenting Adults." He could easily tackle more important, complex parts, as he did in "Suspects" opposite more established talents like Chazz Palminteri and Gabriel Byrne.

Thus, we have "Seven," the penultimate film in what, for character actors, may as well be "The Year of Kevin Spacey." 1995 closed with this popular and memorable tale of a deranged killer who murders his victims according to the Seven Deadly Sins.

Directed by David Fincher, "Seven" is a shocking movie, if for no other reason than its unrelenting ability to present horrifying and gruesome events in the truest, most realistic manner possible. Bloody bodies look appropriately bloody; terrified people look appropriately afraid. The lead characters (Freeman and Brad Pitt) -- two cops on the trail of the enigmatic killer -- behave properly. They act how we might expect men in such a situation really would, not how standard Hollywood conventions dictate.

This idea is further expressed when Spacey emerges as the killer. His "John Doe" is an intelligent, relatively normal-looking man who has brought great pain to a city. Not only is the actor entirely convincing in this part, but he is quite capable of supporting the entire film, despite the limited glimpses we have of him. Absent for most of the film's duration, Spacey suddenly appears and immediately becomes the psychotic killer whose handiwork has been terrifying us. Yet, as with his other roles this year, Kevin Spacey does this with apparently little struggle.