Les Jones

The Usual Suspects > "What Time Is It?"

One thing I never understood was why Keaton asks Keiser Soze "what time is it?" just before Koze kills him. This happens in the opening scene. Keyser Soze is ready to finish off Dean Keaton and asks if he's ready (to die). Keaton asks "What time is it?" Soze looks at his gold watch and tells him "12:30." But why?

The Special Edition DVD contains deleted scenes on the bonus disc. It turns out that at one point in the filming the directors had Keaton planting a bomb in the boat's engine room. He would have known when it was going to go off, which is why he wanted to know the time. That scene was later cut from the movie and the bomb angle dropped, but the "what time is it?" line stayed. Here's the engine room scene with McManus and Keaton:

In that scene Keaton tells McManus there's no cocaine on the boat. They have a confrontation and McManus decides to leave. In the final print of the movie, the scene ends, but the film continues rolling and shows Keaton crouching down and planting a bomb:

(The picture quality is bad, because for some reason the deleted scenes on the DVD have really poor video quality.)

The bomb angle was dropped from the final cut, but it at least made sense. The suspects were told to get on the boat and destroy the cocaine. Smugglers would have hidden 91 million dollars worth of cocaine, either in smuggling compartments or by mixing it in with legitimate cargo. Blowing up the ship by planting a bomb in the engine room makes more sense than the suspects' strategy of looking in state rooms and cupboards.