The Usual Suspects poster analysis.

Looking at this Usual Suspects poster, we notice a key image that is used throughout all of the film posters and the film itself. The image of all the main characters standing in the line-up has been made an iconic image for this film.
The picture itself is a still from part of the actual film. There is a scene where all of the main characters are standing a police line up and are all asked to repeat a quote. This is turning point in the movie and has been cleverly used as part of the marketing strategy for the film.
The use of the police line-up imagery itself gives the audience an idea of what the characters are like. We know automatically just from where they are standing that they are criminals and they could possibly be gangsters. This is also a very clever use of imagery that once again increases film popularity. The characters costume also gives us an idea to the nature of their work and the role they play with in the gangster/criminal community. We see the middle two characters both wearing suits, which shows that these two characters are more the "brains" of the opperation. The characters that are on the outside of the of the group are the more rough looking and "brawn" of the business. They are the ones that do the manual jobs and tend to be the more aggressive and hands on characters.

The characters have also been arranged in order of size. The smaller characters are positioned toward the outside, and the taller characters are positoned toward the middle. It shows how the more powerful characters are taller and emphasises their power over the other characters. This concentrates our focus more towards the centre of the screen and makes us fammiliar with the characters before we have even seen the film, yet again, another clever marketing tool.

James Banister