Did Hong Kong Film Awards best picture Project Gutenberg rip off The Usual Suspects?
- Film critics and general cinema-goers alike believed the film’s central plot twist was a blatant rip-off of the 1995 noir classic starring Kevin Spacey
- But writer-director Felix Chong dismissed the accusations, saying a number of films had influenced him over the years
Spoiler alert! The following contains details about the major plot twist(s) in Project Gutenberg … and a 24-year-old Hollywood movie. Stop reading now if you do not want to know.
Ever since Felix Chong Man-keung’s crime thriller Project Gutenberg opened in Hong Kong cinemas in October, it has been followed by accusations from professional critics and general cinema-goers alike on how the film’s central plot twist feels uncomfortably like a rip-off of The Usual Suspects (1995).
The mockery turned into indignation in some quarters on social media last night when Chong’s film won seven prizes at the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards, including best picture, best director and, ironically for some, best screenplay.
For the uninitiated, The Usual Suspects has been one of the most cited noir classics in the way its story builds up to a mind-blowing final twist that negates everything that came before.
In the Oscar-winning screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, whose career has skyrocketed further since he took up the Mission: Impossible series in 2015’s Rogue Nation , Kevin Spacey plays the timid Verbal Kint, the sole surviving member of a five-strong criminal gang supposedly working for a mythical mastermind, Keyser Söze.