"For me, the anti-hero is one of the most, if not THE most fascinating archetypes to be brought to the silver screen by Hollywood and foreign cinema. When the cinematically skilled craftings of fellow filmmakers result in a crime drama, it is an exciting opportunity to check out. I remember what I believe to be the first time I saw the ‘villain’ as the main character and how that observation became a revelation for storytelling possibilities. It started as a child-aged fascination toward seeing a ‘Wicked’ billboard, asking my mother what that was, and finding out it was a play from the Wicked Witch’s perspective. What followed was not just a mind-blowing answer but a fascination that has carried into the days of now, both creatively and conceptually.
Anti-heroes are unpredictable and rule-breaking outlaws that the audience sees as an entertaining and memorable experience. This unexpected and morally flexible nature leaves similarly flexible room for a narrative to take more risky detours through its runtime. Possessing an antiheroic nature within a starring role in a film leaves much more room for an unpredictable and, hopefully, more exciting story. Sure, having a movie with a predictable narrative that poses as simple fun for the summer’s blockbuster period isn’t persay an ill thing to have in your ever-building library of soon-to-see releases. However, a film that chooses against this path and leaves enough narrative bleakness in front of its runtime certainly isn’t one that I will argue against. Desiring the latter, a narrative, and with an anti-hero at the helm of a film, lies a potential recipe for memorable entertainment. While many films indulge in this desire for such creative pieces of anti-heroic storytelling, there are four in particular that I selected for this article. These four films showcase violently willed main characters aiming for that happy ending yet are unafraid to go toe-to-toe with the face of what seems to be impossible adversity and brutalize their pathway toward it:
Good Time - The Safdie Brothers.
Within the neo-noir thriller of 2017’s Good Time, the story chases downromantic psychopath Constantine “Connie” Nikas. Connie manipulates and backstabs his amoralistic way through the grime-filled underbelly of New York City, as he attempts to bail out his special-needs brother, Nick, from prison. What started as a bank robbery between the two brothers goes way wrong and lands Nick in Rikers Island and Connie scrambling for enough dough to fork over to a bail bondsman. Not much time can be borrowed for the overall innocent, child-
like Nick before he ends up killed in prison. To ensure his wronged brother survives the night in Rikers, Connie Nikas descends like a bat out of Hell, like a poison, onto an already infected side of town. Further demoralizing and destroying his way through a singular stormy night of luck, Connie’s single redeeming quality, his brotherly love, pushes him deeper into trouble, yet hopefully closer to his tragically affiliated partner-in-crime.
The Safdie Brothers brought out a magnificently acted piece of fast-paced street grit, perfectly scored to the synthesized-drenched soundtrack by Oneotrix Point Never. Good Time is a hopeless slice of East Coast struggle. While I see it as bleak, it also drives this feeling of alienness, coupled with Connie’s ignorant exploration through an unfamiliar landscape and with Point Never’s sounds of what feels like the radio station to a UFO. This neo-noir piece is a modern-day trophy of “pulp fiction” through its nihilistic theme of Icaraus syndrome re-dressed as brotherly love. Connie and Nick Nikas are played iconically, as their respective actors lose their physical and vocal identities entirely into these legendarily crafted East Coast denizens.
Brawl in Cellblock 99 - S. Craig Zahler.
Another neo-noir released in 2017, the prison thriller drags the audience across the deathly power of Bradley Thomas, an unstoppable, towering force of bare-knuckled passion. Bradley is an ex-drug dealer with a past in boxing who returns to his dealing roots as a last-ditch effort to save not just his fractured relationship but as a 'climbing out' of his financially lower-class spot in life. After delving back into the game, Bradley's life is on the up and up, with a bigger house, better car, and a much happier, now pregnant significant other. However,
paradise for the soon-to-be trio is only temporary, as Bradley's drug deal goes wrong. A shootout ensues between police and two of Bradley's associates. In a twisted act of patriotic vigilantism, he defends the police, soon finding himself behind bars. Eventually, Bradley is met with a way to right his wrong, sent from his boss and through the phone call of a mysterious gentleman, which is a brooding message. The ex-drug dealing, soon-to-be-father, follows an order to delve into Hell by unleashing Hell, aiming to get himself deeper and deeper into the prison system so that he can locate and execute someone within 'Cell Block 99'. Bradley must find his boss's mark on borrowed time before his pregnant wife and unborn child face mutilation for his past mistakes.
The taste of Hell can be fed to you through what savagery S. Crag Zahler is willing to show and tell. 'Brawl' is unafraid to be ferociously nihilistic and demoralizing while ensuring you stay hopeful. Reminiscent of Dante's Inferno, this harsh manhunt harbors involves traversing deeper into a hellspace for the sake of love. Slowly burning the storyline with spouts of action, the violence demonstrated in this movie carries a weight of violence purposefully not stylized to be cinematically appealing. If 'Brawl' were a cinematic flavor, it would be the equivalent of licking the floor of a parking garage. Zahler's prison thriller descends into the darkest corners while carrying an ever-dimming lantern.
Crank / Crank: High Voltage - Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.
Crank and its sequel, Crank High: Voltage, made (respectively) in 2006 and 2008, are said to be like the movie ‘Speed,’ but if the bus was a person. The Crank franchise shows a path of carnage left by Chev Chelios, a psychopathic hitman based in Los Angeles who finds himself toe-to-toe with death at every heartbeat. Pushing back against what would otherwise be a quick death, Chev instead slows its journey by pumping himself up with doses of beautifully pure, destructive
insanity. Chev will either drive through a mall crowded with people to evade a police chase or hook a jumper cable to his tongue and chest to kickstart himself back into motivation. This chaotic, seemingly inhuman force of sycophantic rage destroys Los Angeles to garner the upper hand against the internal looming-ness of death, as well as the criminal underworld’s seemingly endless count of headhunters that want him dead just as fast as his own body does.
The Crank franchise is an outrageously fun and darkly humored incarnation of chaos that understands the lines that they are coloring out of. This movie showcases a very memorable presentation of directing injected with a strangely deep and even motivational sentiment of moving forward to save oneself. This early 2000s hell ride is an action movie on steroids taken into a punk moshpit. Neveldine and Taylor have conjured an iconic set of action-mixed insanity that remains creatively individualistic and wildly creative, even within a sea of a seemingly endless mix of action movies released 16 to 18 years since then.
From Dusk Till Dawn - Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.
Filmmaking friends Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino team up for 1996’s neo-Western, crime thriller turned vampire survival showdown, From Dusk Till Dawn. With Rodriguez directing, Tarantino writing, and co-starring, the pair take us into Texas and eventually Mexico, with the bank-robbing Geko brothers fleeing from police and looking for a way into freedom. The brothers consist of the slickly attituded and roguish sociopath Seth and his brother Richie, a demented and hotheaded, viciously bloodthirsty, and barely controllable psychopath. After successfully robbing a bank, the well-suited duo seek a way out of Texas and into Mexico. Seth and Richie must lie low at a strip bar in Mexico at
dusk and get picked up by a cartel contact at dawn. Escaping through the border becomes easier but also a more complicated position for the brothers after hijacking an RV and kidnapping its travelers. The brothers journey forth with Jacob, a widowed ex-preacher, his daughter, Kate, and stepson, Scott. After the forcibly yet also strangely acquainted five find themselves in Mexico and at the strip bar, the film soon takes a 360-degree spin into madness. Hordes of vampires descend upon them and a few other newly met friends. The bunch unite into a clique of exterminators against the supernatural and must fight back until dawn breaks and an escape is possible.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a riveting crime thriller and an adventurously silly, survivalistic B-movie of undead warfare. Reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs, From Dusk Till Dawn’s characters are mostly set within a singular location, ripe with unpredictably timed and brutal deaths. The fight for survival eventually becomes a struggle not just from the external forces but from within
the group as some fates get sealed by the plunging teeth of vampires. Some colorfully misfitted characters walk away with an unlikely kind of friendship, a religious transformation, and a nihilistic, bittersweet feeling of loneliness in the wake of a brutal aftermath where death spares no one. Rodriguez and Tarantino created a unique neo-Western oozing with stylish personality, equally stylish violence, and a unique subversion of the brutally violent genres that are the Wild Western and vampirism.
Closing Thoughts
When that anti-heroic protagonist’s actions meet with the cold splash of reality, they find themselves in the back of a squad car, lying on a concrete slab of prison reformation, or riddled with bullet holes and lying in a pool of their past life, their ends also offer the ability for a memorably unhappy ending. Of course, the lives of our anti-heroes usually are not destined to face the warm embrace of the rainbow that overlooks the hill. Crime pays, but not for long, as justice will always find itself dispensed, one way or another. It may be a bad ending for the main character, but morally, it’s fair to say such an ending would be good. The ability to have a bittersweet/unhappy, dare I say, even bad ending is a choice of narrative that I find very admirable and realistic. The film bunch I mention in this article has either bittersweet endings or bad for the protagonist(s) involved. Although their actions may have led to some good transpiring, whether one or more lives had been saved, or simply their incarceration or death led to peace upon others, their fates meet the sharpest part of the sword.
When I see an unhappy ending that will most certainly come at the end of my crime flick's runtime, it is a creative gut punch and fresh air that packs that taste of realism, nihilism, justice, and, honestly, just a welcoming change of cinematic atmosphere. I advocate for this concept of more unhappy endings purely based on wanting more color outside these screenwriting lines. As per their unpredictable pathway, the misfits, outlaws, serial killers, and bank robbers are the plot. When led by the hand of an anti-hero, you never truly know where it may go. They form the plot through their words and actions. Sure, chances are these characters will be behind bars or dead. Most likely, their actions will not lead them to the Bahamas with mountains of dough, dancers, and palm trees. However, with such abrasive actions and a lifestyle that moves at a breakneck speed, we won't know where their reign of conquest will end. One of these societal cowboys may make it out of the crime-laden woods and die peacefully in their mansions. While it's safe to bet a 'no' on that question, one doesn't honestly know with each viewing!"
-- Julian Enghauser
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