# Good movies with bad protagonists (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [March 21, 2021, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357 "2021-03-21T18:21:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/21 "2021-03-22T16:57:42Z")
In ‘to Live and Die in L.A.’ (1985), William Peterson’s character is a real bastard. ---
**Author:** ![phs3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8491ac/32.png) [@phs3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phs3)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/22 "2021-03-22T18:40:40Z")
Falling Down, maybe? I’ve always thought the genius of that movie is that Michael Douglas’s character is a flaming asshole, yet you’re rooting for him for the first part, and all of a sudden you realize what a complete lunatic he is and wonder why you were on his side. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/23 "2021-03-22T18:41:51Z")
“I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?” ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/24 "2021-03-22T19:31:04Z")
> [@phs3](#): > > Falling Down, maybe? I’ve always thought the genius of that movie is that Michael Douglas’s character is a flaming asshole, yet you’re rooting for him for the first part, and all of a sudden you realize what a complete lunatic he is and wonder why you were on his side. That’s why I didn’t like that film. I thought it was a movie about a “normal” guy who just snapped one day, but he had snapped _long_ before the start of the film. I’m not sure the movie knew that. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/25 "2021-03-23T02:08:21Z")
The Oscar. For all I know, Frankie Fane deserved Best Actor for Breakthrough. Never saw it! Bonnie And Clyde. MASH. Hawkeye and company are as jerky as the people they hate. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/26 "2021-03-23T03:04:38Z")
Elmer Gantry. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/27 "2021-03-23T03:19:07Z")
Glengarry Glen Ross. (And, really, just take your pick of Mamet movies.) ---
**Author:** ![Galactus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galactus/32/3581_2.png) [@Galactus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Galactus)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/28 "2021-03-23T03:46:33Z")
Pulp Fiction ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/29 "2021-03-23T04:52:10Z")
It’s been a long time since I saw _The Grifters_, but I don’t recall either character being redeemable. ---
**Author:** ![Smid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/838e76/32.png) [@Smid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smid)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/30 "2021-03-23T09:50:49Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Enemy At The Gates. > > I mean, who do we root for - Nazis or Commies? Me, I wish they’d have all killed each other, but Hollywood for some reason (hey, let’s ask Joe McCarthy. He might have an opinion 🙂 ) always goes easier on Communist Russia. You saw the people who are clearly not really soldiers being herded onto boats at gunpoint, and sent in for slaughter without even a gun each as commies? I saw them as people under a communist regime, and did root for them. One side had trained soldiers, invading, and another side had desperate and heartless leaders sending their people out to die. I don’t see rooting for the soviet people going easy on communists. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/31 "2021-03-23T14:58:28Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > I saw them as people under a communist regime, and did root for them. One side had trained soldiers, invading, and another side had desperate and heartless leaders sending their people out to die. You’re falling for the communist propaganda. 🙂 Peasants with one gun between two people didn’t defeat the Nazis. The might of the Soviet military (backed by the US) defeated the Nazis. Hitler and Stalin both send their people to the meat grinder of the Russian Front. As every Rusdian peasant wasn’t a commie, not every German foot soldier was a Nazi. The Germans were forced just as much as the Russians. I’m not willing to give Stalin any kind of pass. The movie shows the kind hearted Russians defeating the nasty Nazis. What the movie fails to mention is that, for the next 50 years, those kind hearted peasants were forced to live under comminust subjugation and oppression. Maybe if the Nazis has defeated Stalinist Russia, and then we defeated the nazis, the whole Soviet system might be a mere footnote in history. But that’s fodder for alt history novels. ---
**Author:** ![Smid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/838e76/32.png) [@Smid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smid)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/32 "2021-03-23T15:13:38Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > The movie shows the kind hearted Russians defeating the nasty Nazis. This is not the movie I watched. However, I am not interested in a 50 post argument about it, with the mods intervening, so I am just going to say that I disagree with most of what you are saying, and I’m out. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/33 "2021-03-23T16:18:52Z")
> [@Galactus](#): > > Pulp Fiction Pretty much all Tarantino films, really. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/34 "2021-03-23T16:23:40Z")
What’s wrong with Butch? ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/35 "2021-03-23T16:33:51Z")
IIRC, he took a bribe from a mobster to throw a fight, then double-crossed the mobster to take the money and run. He wasn’t blackmailed or threatened; he voluntarily took the bribe. Not only that, he lost control during the fight and beat his opponent to death. Like a lot of Tarantino protagonists, he’s not really a good guy, he’s just less bad than everyone else. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/36 "2021-03-23T18:25:16Z")
Even at all that, Vasily Zaitsev(Jude Law) was not portrayed negatively, nor was Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), or Tania(Rachel Weisz). Konig(Ed Harris) on the other hand is marked as a bad guy by killing the kid to bait Zaitsev. I think the movie was not really getting into the actual geopolitical aspects of the battle or war, but rather portraying a character and the events surrounding him in the Battle of Stalingrad. But the character himself wasn’t a bad guy, and nor were most of the other Russians. And for what it’s worth, a lot of the stuff in the movie was apocryphal, especially the 2 soldiers, one rifle stuff. What you did have is a Red Army that had been ruthlessly purged its officer corps almost immediately before the war started, and which hadn’t retrained or replaced a lot of officers. So they were virtually leaderless for all of 1941, and were learning on the job during 1942. By 1943, they largely had things figured out and were training officers in their armored warfare doctrines (developed pre-war), and putting them into practice vs. the Germans. Meanwhile the Germans were always well trained and well led, but almost always outmanned and outgunned in most ways. Once the Red Army found its footing and started actually training professional officers, and fighting according to doctrine and lessons learned, the tide decisively turned and never changed back (this was actually six or seven months later at Kursk when the Germans lost the strategic initiative). Most of the business about the Russians and their huge numbers merely overwhelming the Germans was a combination of post-war German revisionism by their ex-generals, and US Cold War propaganda intended to make the Russians look less competent than they were. The movie doesn’t really go into this though; it’s just about Zaitsev and the events surrounding him during the battle. And in that context, he’s the guy to root for, as at the time, they were US allies, and the story is sympathetic to the Soviets. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/37 "2021-03-23T19:26:30Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > IIRC, he took a bribe from a mobster to throw a fight, then double-crossed the mobster to take the money and run. He wasn’t blackmailed or threatened; he voluntarily took the bribe. Not only that, he lost control during the fight and beat his opponent to death. Like a lot of Tarantino protagonists, he’s not really a good guy, he’s just less bad than everyone else. There wasn’t an _explicit_ threat, but I really doubt Marcellus Wallace would have accepted “thanks, but no thanks” as answer when he told Butch he wanted him to take a dive. I don’t recall if there was a bribe involved or not - the real payout Butch got from the fight was from agreeing to take a dive, letting word get out that the fix was in, then betting heavily on himself to win. Possibly he used the bribe as the seed money for that? Regardless, I don’t think cheating a cheater makes Butch a bad guy - plus, he went back to save Marcellus, even though it was 100% in his best interest if Wallace just disappears without a trace. I didn’t get the impression that he “lost control” in the fight. People sometimes die in boxing matches - it’s just one of the things that might happen if you punch someone in the head a lot. There’s maybe an implication that the other fighter was expecting Butch to take a dive, and was caught off guard when he fought hard instead, but I don’t think Butch bears too much moral responsibility for the other boxer dying. As far as other Tarantino films with “good” protagonists, I’d argue that Django, and to a lesser degree Schultz, are both good guys in _Django Unchained._ Also the allied soldiers in _Inglourious Basterds_ are brutal and unforgiving, but I don’t think they hurt anyone in the movie who didn’t massively deserve it. Oh, and Mr. Orange in _Reservoir Dogs_ blows his cover to stop one of the other robbers from torturing the cop to death, which is genuinely heroic, even if it doesn’t work out for anyone involved in the long run. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/38 "2021-03-23T19:48:16Z")
I watched [_I Care a Lot_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Care_a_Lot) on Netflix a couple of weeks ago. Pretty good story, and no actual **good** people in sight. ETA: link goes to the Wikipedia article on the film, which contains spoilers. ---
**Author:** ![YamatoTwinkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cc9497/32.png) [@YamatoTwinkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YamatoTwinkie)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/39 "2021-03-23T20:42:12Z")
_Uncut Gems_ fits well here. Pretty much everyone in the movie is a terrible person. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357/40 "2021-03-23T21:25:52Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > There wasn’t an _explicit_ threat, but I really doubt Marcellus Wallace would have accepted “thanks, but no thanks” as answer when he told Butch he wanted him to take a dive. I don’t recall if there was a bribe involved or not - the real payout Butch got from the fight was from agreeing to take a dive, letting word get out that the fix was in, then betting heavily on himself to win. Possibly he used the bribe as the seed money for that? Regardless, I don’t think cheating a cheater makes Butch a bad guy - plus, he went back to save Marcellus, even though it was 100% in his best interest if Wallace just disappears without a trace. > > I didn’t get the impression that he “lost control” in the fight. People sometimes die in boxing matches - it’s just one of the things that might happen if you punch someone in the head a lot. There’s maybe an implication that the other fighter was expecting Butch to take a dive, and was caught off guard when he fought hard instead, but I don’t think Butch bears too much moral responsibility for the other boxer dying. I’ve only seen the movie once, and it’s been quite a while, so it’s entirely possible that Butch was a better guy than I remember. I may be misremembering this as well, but I don’t remember Butch as being _the_ protagonist. Didn’t Vincent Vega have at least as big a part? And I think a professional hitman definitely counts as a “bad protagonist”. > [@Miller](#): > > I’d argue that Django, and to a lesser degree Schultz, are both good guys in _Django Unchained._ Ish? They certainly don’t hesitate to ambush and kill their targets without even a pretense of a chance to surrender. We generally don’t give a pass to extra-judicial killings in the real world. Also, and I may be misremembering this, but don’t they participate in the brutal maiming and killing of innocent slaves as part of their cover? It’s presented as the only realistic path they have to save Django’s wife, but it still seemed pretty awful. > [@Miller](#): > > Also the allied soldiers in _Inglourious Basterds_ are brutal and unforgiving, but I don’t think they hurt anyone in the movie who didn’t massively deserve it. This is a much longer discussion than this thread will bear, but, no, I _strenuously_ disagree with that. They were war criminals, pure and simple. Colonel Landa was far worse, not to mention Hitler, but I think they firmly fall into the category of no good guys, just protagonists who aren’t as bad as everyone else (some of the other characters in that film do probably count as good guys, or at least not bad guys, but the titular Basterds are definitely bad protagonists). > [@Miller](#): > > Oh, and Mr. Orange in _Reservoir Dogs_ blows his cover to stop one of the other robbers from torturing the cop to death, which is genuinely heroic, even if it doesn’t work out for anyone involved in the long run. IIRC, he also participated in a violent armed robbery in which apparently a number of police officers were killed, and he killed an innocent woman himself, and allows the captured cop to be tortured and maimed before he intervenes. This is all presented as hard, necessary choices he makes to carry out his mission, so…maybe? But, he’s also not the only protagonist in the movie. The other members of the gang are definitely bad protagonists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movies-with-bad-protagonists-open-spoilers/938357.md?page=3)