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| Bud White (Russel Crowe) in LA Confidential - a good example of the brutal, amoral hero |
The one word that sums up the lead character in any noir film is ambiguous. Rarely, if ever, does the hero in this genre ever stick to one side of the war so to speak. They are constantly jumping from side to side of the moral fence. However, this role can often develop in two key ways: either the hero, however hard he might try to hide it, has high morals but deals with situations presented in a highly immoral way. A prime example of this is from the film LA Confidential in which one of the three main character - Bud White (Russel Crowe) - breaks into the house of a kidnapper and rapist and shoots the suspect as he tries to surrender. Another common feature concerning heroes in noir is corruption. Most commonly in the form of a woman as in the film Double Indemnity where Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray) is talked into murder and insurance fraud by the beautiful Ms Dietrichson.
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| Orson Wells as Kane in Citizen Kane |
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| Fred MacMurray as Wlater Neff in Double Indemnity |
Hardly ever do the mail leads come out of the story well - in LA Confidential one character is killed and one grievously wounded. In Citizen Kane, Kane's memory is desecrated as he dies lonely and unfulfilled. A typical role of the hero is to be a detective or a criminal, but whatever profession they belong to - be it legal or illegal - they almost always share the same characteristics. The hero is normally well spoken, well dressed and smart. They are generally impassible and ruthless and often blur the line between right and wrong, demonstrating both great cruelty and great compassion. As an audience we are meant to understand but not sympathise with the hero. A perfect example of this is Kane in Citizen Kane. We see, through lengthy expositions, a man driven by greed and greed alone, eventually forsaking everything - love, appearance, trust and everything in between to try and fill the real void in his life which, when it is revealed in the last minutes of the film, alters our perception of the plot and the characters completely.
Anti-Heroes are always fairly complicated characters to deal with an audience or a writer. Naturally we are drawn to their flaws and many people like them more than conventional, two-dimensional and unrealistically perfect heroes we find in films such as the James Bond series. Therefore, against our will, we start to identify with them as characters. This is crucial as it gives the writer almost a licence to make the anti-hero as cold and despicable as possible (example: Harry Lime in the Third Man) knowing full well that the audience will be interested enough in them to forgive the characters for their discrepancies in the name of interest.
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