Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

I defy any of you to be unable to find at least one movie where you secretly, or indeed not so secretly, root for the bad guy. I guess that something in all of us responds to a certain type of charismatic rule breaking or disdain for authority and/or a corrupt status quo. It’s no secret that’s why vigilante movies are so popular. With critically acclaimed Harry Brown, the latest Joe-Public-takes-the-law-into-his-own-hands story, seeing it’s pre-release advance screenings tonight I thought I’d take a look at just what makes a “bad” guy we can all get behind.

A character’s actions in a movie are the first thing that will change the way you feel about them. If a bad guy displays some good or compassion it can start to tip the balance, even if a bad guy is really bad. I think the most popular example would have to be Hannibal Lecter. There is no doubt that, at his core, the character is evil. He murdered and ate innocent people. But Lecter’s perverse sense of right and wrong, particularly illustrated in his relationship with Special Agent Clarice Starling in Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs had audiences second guessing his character and questioning just how bad a guy he actually is. Sure he’s murdered a bunch of people but without his “help” at least two other killers would still be at large and Starling would have been dead about five times over. It’s one hell of an effective plot device. The Predator‘s rudimentary honour code, the fact he won’t harm an unarmed or weak target, inspired audiences to at least respect the brutal alien monster.

But it’s not just a character’s actions that can have this effect. The circumstances a character is placed into can act as a catalyst for sympathy. A well written story and well acted bad guy in the right set of circumstances can act almost like cinematic Stockholm Syndrome. One example of this can be found in the 2005 David Slade film, Hard Candy. Here we see a man who, as evidence revealed later on in the movie suggests, is a paedophile yet the torture and humiliation he is put through is so extreme that flashes of sympathy shoot through your mind and sucker punch all that you think you believe about how these people should be punished. Of course this is fleeting. You soon find yourself back in the real world thinking “Wait! He’s a paedo for fuck’s sake! He had this coming!!”. If that wasn’t the case, Slade could have essentially tied a noose around his career. But that doesn’t matter. The seed was planted and, for a time, it grew. The Woodsman (2004) played this same dangerous game with Kevin Bacon playing a convicted child molester seeking to rebuild his life and questionably pushed the case for sympathy towards criminals of that kind too far. The film sure caught a lot of stick for it despite its overwhelmingly positive critical reception.

These are simply two roads to the same destination. Wether it’s the character’s actions or the circumstances into which they are put the result is a singular effect; emotional conflict. You know you should see them as bad guys, sometimes even evil, but their actions and/or circumstances in the movie have you questioning this. At the very least pangs of sympathy, however fleeting, begin to surface. Sometimes this is even subconscious, arguably the best ones are. It’s the same reason anti-heroes are so popular. A good guy with a mean streak is great to watch in exactly the same way as a bad guy with a conscience, or at least one who has atoned for his sins. As well as keeping the audience on its toes, characters like this depict greater depth than pretty much any other type of character can. They can be used as clever literary devices to dodge lengthly and tedious character development like a kind of ninja Wordsworth.

If you look at movies where the bad guys don’t evoke these conflicted emotions you’ll see that they are much more two-dimensional. This is by no means a bad thing, if it’s done right. Some movies require you to hold no sympathy for the bad guys. If you thought, even subconsciously that Hans Gruber was in any way just, the classic anti-hero John McLane would have lost much of his appeal. There wouldn’t have been the same satisfaction in seeing him drop Gruber from the top of that sky-scraper. “Yippee Kai Yay Motherfucker!” would have lost it’s punch and a three-sequel power franchise may have just been a mildly entertaining flash in the pan condemned to a life of DVD hell in a supermarket bargain bin.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any personal favourite questionable bad guys or anti-heroes? What made you feel this way about them?