I agree, great script and movie but a lot of the surprise was just basically because they never revealed any of it to us in the first place. We all learned it the same time as the cop, so of course we were surprised. It would have been harder to put all those clues within the entire script, maybe even impossible

The editing is incredible in that scene. A lot of praise should go to John Ottman.

I love that the coffee cup breaks 3 times -- and you don't really think about it, logically. You are so ingrained to the story, that it heightens the dramatic effect of that scene.

The movie was very well made, of course. But I felt a little cheated at the end... the whole script was formulated to surprise the viewers at the very end and in hindsight it feels very artificial. I remember feeling suspicious of Verbal in the very beginning when he said he was a con man.... whenever one knows that a guy is a con man, I always keep suspecting that everything is being orchestrated and that the characters are being played. Then the whole movie spends itself in dissolving any such suspicion only to reveal at the end the 'surprise'! It can feel like being cheated... but what the hell it was great entertainment.