The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes, part 2

So after a week off to discuss the fairly shitting nature of The Book of Eli, it's time to get back to my series of posts on Anti-Heroes, which wasn't really a series since there was just the one post before now, but let's not be dicks about this, shall we?

Anyhow, by way of recap:

1. I dig Anti-Heroes.

2. Therefore, Anti-Heroes are cool.

3. An Anti-Hero is a character that despite being an asshole, douchebag or even evil most of the time, manages by the end of the movie to perform a truly heroic act, either because they've changed their character, or more likely, because a kink in that character followed it's logical way toward an act of heroism.

4. This definition is not like everyone else's, but this is my blog, so they can suck it.

5. Larry Flynt and Barry Lyndon are Anti-Heroes.

6. Larry Flynt likes boobies.

So now that that's out of the way, allow me to present, with no further ado....

Anti-Hero #8: Walt Kowolski from Gran Torino

Get off my plane, err... lawn!

ANTI: Racist, violent and bitter, Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski chugs Pabst Blue Ribbon and stalks his front porch, shotgun never far away, hurling insults at anyone -- priests, family, neighbors -- who comes near.

As the movie starts, Walt's wife has just died. No one in his family respects him, and he hates all of them. His granddaughter waits for his death, hoping to inherit his 1972 Grand Torino and a couch he keeps in the basement. One of his sons and his wife ask him whether he's ready to move, so eager are they to sell his house. In this way the movie invites us to sympathize with Walt. Sure, he's a racist asshole, the movie says, but everyone around him is just as a bad.

And he is bad. Every non-white person he meets is a "gook," "zipperhead," "spook" or the like. Any sign of disrespect he seems to consider an offense worthy of execution. When given the chance to tell a joke, he says:

"A Mexican, a Jew and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, 'Get the fuck out of here.'"

Later, he tells a gang member, "I'll blow your head off, go inside and sleep like a baby."

Deleted scene.

HERO: But Walt's heart is eventually melted by a family of Hmongs (Asians) who live next door. Well, not really the whole family, just a kid (Thao, who Walt calls "Toad") and his sister, Sue (who Walt calls "Dragon Lady").

Sue he admires for her strength in facing down three black hoods (Walt comes to her rescue in what's probably the best scene in the movie), and she ends up inviting him to a party and introducing him to the family.

His relationship with Thao is more problematic. Young and aimless, Thao's pursued by a local Hmong gang who want to make him a member. His initiation: stealing Walt's Gran Torino. But when Walt catches him in the act, Thao only barely gets away with his life. Later, his mother and Sue come back to Walt with a request: let Thao work off the debt.

Well, those of you who haven't seen the movie can guess where this is going. Walt and Thao become friends (to the point of Walt getting Thao a job), the gang intimidates Thao, Walt fights back, the gang rapes Sue (so maybe you didn't guess that part) and Walt, though haunted by memories of Korea, knows he must respond.

But how? How does one foul-mouthed septugenarian take on a six or seven gang members without ending up like, well....

This.

The answer is (uh, Spoiler Alert): he doesn't. Walt chooses to sacrifice himself by walking onto the gang's front lawn, threatening them and then pretending to pull a gun out of his jacket. When the gang mows him down in the presence of neighborhood full of witnesses, the cops are called, who promptly haul the gang off in chains.

For Walt, who the movie implies is about die from lung cancer anyway, they bring the meat wagon.

Now I personally have some problems with the logic of Walt's plan. If the gang has truly been terrorizing everyone as much as the movie implies, why would shooting someone on their front lawn be the thing that suddenly makes the neighborhood decide to stand up to them? And even if you're Walt and you assume there's a reasonable chance of this (which given that he is still a racist and despises most of the Hmongs shouldn't be something he assumes), it's pretty hard to gamble your life on just a reasonable chance. I'd have to be sure. Especially since if you die and the gang gets away with it, there's nothing to stop them from terrorizing Thao and Sue without end.

But despite those nagging problems, Walt's choice cannot be called anything but heroic. His revenge is total without being bloody. By sacrificing his own life, he gives his Hmong neighbors (by this time, his surrogate family) the freedom to live theirs in peace.

Anti-Hero #7: Tony le Stephanois from Rififi

Portrayed by Jean Servais

I've already written a bit about the great movie Rififi, so hopefully this will be somewhat shorter than the fucking opus the above turned out to be.

ANTI: A career criminal and ice-cold killer, Tony is simply not to be fucked with. Aging, just released from prison after five years for a jewel heist and stricken with tuberculosis, a friend finds him playing poker in a smoke-filled room in the early hours of the morning. This friend is Jo the Swede, genial and loyal protege of Tony's, who has a son Tony dotes on.

Tony asks about his old girlfriend, Mado. Jo tells him she's taken up with a rival -- scumbag nightclub owner Pierre Grutter. Tony goes to the nightclub and finds Mado a kept woman, dressed in expensive clothes and glittering with jewelery. Tony invites her back to his run down apartment, where he forces her to strip and then savagely beats her.

Tony, Jo and two other men plan an elaborate jewel heist, the 30 minute execution of which has become the inspiration for countless other heist sequences, and which originally got the film banned in some countries for being too realistic. Anyhow, the heist goes perfectly, except for one thing -- one of the men, a safecracker named Cesar Macaroni, has fallen in love with a singer involved with Grutter -- and when he gives her a jewel from the heist, Grutter figures out what happened, captures Cesar and learns everything.

Now in pursuit of Grutter and his men, Tony finds the Cesar tied up alone backstage at Grutter's club. Tony walks up, squints and coldly pulls out his gun.

"I liked you, Macaroni," Tony says. "But you know the rules."

Wrong kind of "rules," dickhead.

HERO: Jo the Swede knows where the jewels are, and when Grutter finds out, he conspires to steal them for himself. His plan? Kidnap Jo's son.

This springs Tony, coughing but still deadly, into action, as he begins a desperate search for the boy before Jo inevitably gives in to Grutter's demands. His search leads him first to find Cesar, who he kills in cold blood, and then out to a house on the outskirts of town where Grutter and his men are hiding.

Knowing that Grutter will simply kill Jo and his son once he has the jewels, Tony launches a one man assault on the house, killing each man in turn before (Spoiler Alert) being fatally wounded himself.

But he grabs Jo's son, and instead of rushing to a hospital, he drives at breakneck speed back into town, dying as soon as he's delivered the boy. Like Walt Kowalski, he sacrifices himself for an innocent, and despite being a violent sociopath and hardened criminal, achieves a moment of heroism.

Netflix cont'd

A little more than two weeks ago, I wrote my first entry about Netflix. At that point, I had 145 movies in my queue and 579 rated movies, both of which seem like a lot.

Uh, not so much. These days I'm up to 193 movies in the queue and 769 rated movies. This would seem like showing off if it wasn't actually saying that I clearly spend way too much time watching movies (769 movies, assuming I've only watched them all once, which I definitely haven't, translates to more than 64 straight days).

Anyhow, as last time, I thought I would review a few of the movies that I've been working my way through.

#1 Shoot the Piano Player (1964, Francois Truffaut) tells the story of Charlie, a once famous concert pianist (played by 5'3" Charles Aznavour, looking amazingly like a water rat) who, driven to depression after his wife's suicide, has been reduced to playing in a parisian bar under a pseudonym.

Now, the movie's description says that "when his brothers get in trouble with gangsters, Charlie inadvertently gets dragged into the chaos and is forced to rejoin the family he once fled."

And that's the part that grabbed me. Sadly, however, the movie wasn't really like that, choosing to spend most of it's 84 minute running time focusing on Charlie's past and his budding romance with a waitress in the bar, who fortunately doesn't look at all like a water rat.

But once I got over my disappointment, I found Shoot the Piano Player pretty enjoyable. It switches back a forth a bit between comedic and noir touches. But, aside from the end, where Charlie's son gets kidnapped by mobsters who are looking for his brother and Charlie is forced to go after them, the movie is mostly a portrait of a damaged guy who, rather than dealing with his problems, has escaped into a level of existence low enough he hope he can hide from them.

But, as the movie proves, eventually it catches up with you.

My rating: 3.5 stars out of 5.

#2 The Verdict (1982, Sidney Lumet) is the story of Frank Gavlin, a down on his luck alcoholic lawyer played brilliantly by Paul Newman. Reduced from his once promising career to stalking funeral homes and giving his card to the bereaved, Gavlin is on his way out.

Then a friend of his (played by Jack Warden) shows up, offering him an easy case: a woman was given the wrong anesthetic and ended up with brain damage. Gavlin sees an easy payday, but while investigating the case, something in him suddenly snaps, and he decides he wants to try and win it in court rather than settle.

Standing in his way is an attorney dubbed the "Prince of Darkness" (played with charming ruthlessness by one of my favorite actors, James Mason), who will stop at nothing to beat Gavlin, and an antagonistic judge.

Now if you're thinking this story sounds a bit cliche, well, you're right. But the movie doesn't play that way. Newman, Lumet and legendary screenwriter David Mamet conspire to make the plot seem to spring from the peculiarities of the characters. And while the story and character seem grim, Newman's charm makes its way through his portrayal of the damaged Gavlin.

The character's final summation is one of the most famous in the history of the movies.

My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

#3 Rififi (1955, Jules Dassin) is a wonderful French crime movie. Directed by the expatriate Dassin, an American who had been forced to flee the US due to HUAC, Rififi tells the story of a group of thieves who plan and execute an elaborate jewel heist.

The key character is Tony le Stephanois, a serious-as-a-heart attack ex-con riddled with tuberculosis played Jean Servais with tired, lethal authority (Servais himself was an alcoholic).

In a sequence that would inspire countless heist films to follow, the burglars cut through a hole in the ceiling above the jewelry store, crack the safe and escape with the jewels. The sequence is done without music or dialogue and takes up a quarter of the movie's 115 minute running time. And it's fantastic. It was realistic enough to get the movie banned in Finland and Mexico, where it was thought that similar burglaries would be attempted because of it.

But as exciting as the burglary is, the movie is still only half over. Due to carelessness by one of the team, a ruthless nightclub owner with a longstanding feud with le Stephanois finds out about the team, and he goes about tracking them down. Eventually, the son of one of the men is kidnapped. This springs le Stephanois, coughing and brutal, into action, and he begins to hunt the men down, tracking them to a house in the country.

Rififi is the perfect example of a well executed crime/noir film. Though the protagonists are thieves and killers, they're loyal to each other and to a code of conduct. As hardbitten as le Stephanois is, in earlier scenes he's gentle with the young boy who eventually gets kidnapped, making his desperate search for him something we can identify with.

So yeah, it's a great movie. And a bonus, to you folks who want to see it, is that someone's posted a high quality version of it on YouTube. Embedding has been disabled, but it's available at this link:

Rififi part 1 of 12.

Part 2 is here, to give you an idea how the titles have been formatted.

Needless to say, Rififi gets a 5 out of 5.

So that's that. I didn't get a chance to review Buster Keaton's Seven Chances here. But if you're interested, it was good, but not great. Say a 3 out of 5.