Edward Norton's Best Movies With A Twist To Watch Before The Oscars

Norton's character in Fight Club is listed as “The Narrator.” He's an office drone who has become frustrated by modern society's obsession with materialism and status. To feel something real, he fakes having cancer so that he can attend a support group for survivors. Then he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a guy who runs an underground group where similarly disaffected men take out their anger by beating one another to a pulp. The Narrator becomes involved, only to get unwittingly dragged into a domestic terrorism plot Tyler has hatched. It involves blowing up financial institutions. 

During the big climax, viewers learn why the Narrator doesn't have a name - he and Tyler are the same person. A split personality has created two separate identities, one of which is intent on societal destruction. Realizing that he's really Tyler proves shocking for Norton's character because that means he's the one who has been organizing the terrorist activity that's about to go down.

In Primal Fear, Norton plays Aaron Stampler, an altar boy accused of brutally murdering Chicago's archbishop. Richard Gere co-stars as Martin Vail, a defense attorney hired to represent him in court. Aaron, who was abused by that archbishop for years, has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, a mental health condition in which the patient develops multiple personalities. Vail argues that his client should be declared mentally incompetent because his alter ego, Roy, committed the murder. 

The gambit works, and Aaron is sentenced to a psychiatric hospital rather than jail. Once he's completed treatment, he will be released. That's when the other shoe drops, with Aaron confessing that there never was a second personality. He knowingly killed the archbishop and then faked DID in order to avoid jail time. 

Set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, The Illusionist casts Norton as a magician named Eisenheim. He's invited to perform at the castle by Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), who plans to humiliate him by figuring out all the tricks and revealing their workings to the assembled crowd. Leopold's scheme doesn't work, which makes him almost as angry as discovering his girlfriend Sophie (Jessica Biel) was once romantically involved with Eisenheim. The situation becomes even more tense when Leopold believes Eisenheim is using magic against him and hires Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) to investigate. 

The movie builds to Sophie being murdered. Uhl suspects Leopold is the culprit. Instead, her passing is yet another trick orchestrated by Eisenheim. Sophie consumed drugged wine that would knock her out, and then a friend of Eisenheim's posed as a doctor declared her dead. A gem from Leopold's sword was previously planted near her body to implicate him. With Leopold out of the way, Sophie awakens and is permanently reunited with her true love, the magician. 

There are two game-changing plot twists in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Norton plays eccentric billionaire Miles Bron. He invites a bunch of friends - and master detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) - to his private Greek island for a game in which he will be pretend-murdered and they will have the weekend to figure out whodunit. One of the guests is Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe), Miles's former business partner who now hates his guts. The game goes awry when another guest, Duke (Dave Bautista), is murdered for real.

The first shocking twist is that Andi is not really Andi. She's Helen, Andi's twin sister. Unbeknownst to the others, the real Andi was murdered, so she's assuming her sibling's identity to look for the truth. The second twist is that, while Miles is not the victim as initially planned, he is definitely the murderer, not just of Duke but also of Andi. He killed Andi to prevent her from revealing that her ideas were the basis for much of his success, and he killed Duke after he found out. Miles ironically would have gotten away with it had he not arranged this “fun” weekend for his friends. 

The Score features Robert De Niro as Nick, a criminal safe-cracker. He wants to retire, but his old friend Max (Marlon Brando) tips him off to a valuable royal scepter being stored in the basement of the Montreal Customs House. If he can snag it, he'll be set for life. Despite generally working alone, Nick agrees to team with younger thief Jack (Norton), who has gained access to the building by pretending to be an intellectually disabled janitor. 

Teaming up proves to be a bad idea. Once Nick is inside the safe and has the scepter, Jack points a gun at him and demands that he hand it over. It appears that the younger thief has double-crossed the older one. But then Nick calls Jack later on and tells him to look inside the bag. That's when Jack discovers that Nick anticipated his betrayal and gave him a fake scepter. Nick still has the real thing and will be the sole beneficiary of the heist. 

Collateral Beauty is a genuinely odd film with a sentimental twist that will either have you reaching for the tissues or rolling your eyes in disbelief. Will Smith stars as New York advertising executive Howard Inlet. After the death of his young daughter, he sinks into a depression and becomes distracted at work, to the dismay of his colleagues, including Whit Yardsham (Norton). They're worried his behavior will jeopardize their shared business, so they scheme to do something about it. Since Howard started writing letters to Love, Time, and Death as a therapeutic exercise, they hire actors to play those concepts and interact with Howard. The end goal is that these encounters will be videotaped, with the actors digitally removed to make it seem as though Howard is talking to himself. That way, they can push him out.

None of that is the twist, though. Howard attends a grief support group where he meets a woman named Madeleine (Naomie Harris) who also lost a daughter. They get a little flirty, and it seems like she might be able to help him through his grief in some way. On Christmas Eve, Howard visits Madeleine at her home. She shows him a video of her husband playing with their late daughter. That's the moment Howard realizes that Madeleine is his wife, and his excessive grief has caused him to block her out. In the end, the actors hired to play Love, Time, and Death vanish into thin air, implying that they might actually be the concepts they were portraying? Again, Collateral Beauty is a genuinely odd film.