The Greatest Anti-Heroes in Film

When it comes to film we have to be careful not to equate anti-heroes with villains. A villain stands in opposition to a hero or protagonist.

An anti-hero, on the contrary, is expressive of a film's entire conflict. He stands in opposition only to himself. His character demonstrates a complex of power and malice, desire and despair, courage and folly that bring him to a breaking point, ultimately divorcing the character from the society that once celebrated him. Charisma turns to pride and pride to self-loathing.

The annals of film anti-heroes are rich and on par with the history of literary anti-heroes. This wealth of internally flawed juggernauts is topped by a select few men and women who go rotten over the course of the film and turn their backs to all friendship.

Tony Montana - Scarface

Al Pacino is no stranger to morally ambiguous roles. He was the godfather in The Godfather II, as Michael Corleone, responsible for the murder of his own idiot brother Fredo.

In Dog Day Afternoon, another classic, Pacino is a gay bank robber trying to raise money for his boy friend's sex operation. He is a hard-scrabble, down-and-dirty guy but he doesn't want anyone to get hurt. People get hurt anyway.

These characters are neither anti-heroes nor heroes. Their moral position is, in the end, too complex to argue that either causes his own downfall.

Morality, ambiguous or otherwise, is thrown out the window in Al Pacino's famous portrayal of Tony Montana in Scarface. Montana is deported from Cuba along with hundreds of other criminals. In Florida he quickly makes connections and becomes enmeshed in the Miami underworld, where before the film ends, he rises to the top to find himself alone because he betrayed the only people bold enough to love him, his sister and best friend.

Montana goes down in a hail of bullets where he introduces several policemen to his "little friend", an automatic machine gun.

Al Pacino's role wins him this writer's vote for "greatest anti-hero in film". Confronted with reason and compassion and pleas for mercy, Tony Montana unfailingly chooses the path of corruption, possession, and greed.

If it were in his power, Montana would devour the world like a line of cocaine, then smile his sparkling, animal smile, and fall asleep content.

Jake La Motta - Raging Bull

In his turn at playing the anti-hero, Robert De Niro does not disappoint.

Jake La Motta is a Brooklyn boxer who stubbornly insists on doing things his own way. A violent temper and a tendency toward insecure paranoia lead Jake down a path of isolation that grows along with his success.

De Niro creates an indelible impression as La Motta. With shifts in physical presentation that match the mercurial shifts in La Motta's mood, De Niro gives the audience a glimpse into the life of a man on the verge of madness, driven to it by demons that he cannot control and which only he cannot see.

Before the end, La Motta is reduced to a nightclub routine where he quotes Shakespeare and references his past glories in the seedy digs of his own south Florida club. He turns against his brother and his wife - the only two people bold enough to love him. (I know I said that already but it applies here too!)

Travis Bickle - Taxi Driver

Robert De Niro makes the list of superlative anti-heroes again with his turn as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Martin Scorcesedirected this film as well as Raging Bull and gets the most out of DeNiro in both.

The Bickle character is a classic example of the anti-hero in that he demonstrates traits in direct opposition to true heroism. He desires to be a hero but he is incapable.

He wants to help clean up the world, but doesn't realize that he is a perfect example of the "scum" that he wishes would be "washed away" by a great deluge in New York City.

Bickle, in his attempts at gallantry, takes a date to a pornography theater. Bickle, in his attempt at rescuing a young and willing prostitute from the streets, is shot down in a gun battle with a pimp (Harvey Keitel).

Bickle is an anti-hero then because he fails utterly in his attempts at being a real hero. His vision is clouded by delusions so profound that one cannot overstate them.

He is insane and in his insanity thinks himself great. Bickle is like a NYC Don Quixote, who has no side-kick. Instead, he has a gun taped to his wrist. He has a quest and a madness but in his madness does not bring people together in love and pity, as Quixote does. Instead, Bickle casts shame on those he would impress and brings ruin down on those he would save.

sources:
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000134/