A crippled con man named Verbal Kint is one of only two survivors of a devastating boat explosion in San Pedro Bay, which left several criminals dead. He's hauled in by U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan, who presses him for information. Under interrogation, Verbal recounts the serendipitous events that led to the formation of a gang of criminals—five men who were initially brought together when they were all rounded up, mistakenly identified as suspects for a truck hijacking in New York six weeks prior. As Kint spins his tale, he weaves a complex web about how these "usual suspects" started to work together on various illegal enterprises, culminating in the boat incident.

The ostensible mastermind behind the boat job is the mysterious and feared Keyser Söze, a criminal mastermind whose name evokes dread in the underworld. Verbal describes how each member of the group came into Söze's employment through a lawyer named Kobayashi, slowly revealing the connections and the forces that drove them to be involved in the explosive confrontation on the boat. As Kint continues his story, Agent Kujan becomes increasingly absorbed, trying to distill truth from Verbal's labyrinthine tale, and attempting to ascertain the true identity and motivations of the enigmatic Keyser Söze, whose influence seems to loom over every twist and turn of the recounted events.