The most compelling anti-heroes?

To be a bit more specific, I’m talking about morally ambiguous characters who aren’t afraid to do some questionable things to get the right things done. For me the two characters that immediately come to my mind are Riddick from the well known sci-fi film trilogy and Max Rockatansky from the very well known Mad Max films.

I would choose Deadpool for this one I think. With The Punisher added for good measure.

Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

Got to have 'Oddball' (Kelly's Heroes) in this list!

One could add Air Marshall Dowding as portrayed in the film 'Battle of Britain' :
"You do appreciate, Dowding, that Churchill will have to see this?
DOWDING: That’s why I wrote it."

Walter White.

Tyrion Lannister

Elliot Alderson

Both are excellent choices. To be honest, comic book characters didn't even cross my mind when I was initially thinking of this thread topic.

Clint Eastwood? James Bond?

FYI, Clint Eastwood is a real person.

A real person cant be anti-hero? LOL! I don't know what anti-hero is. How about Terminator in the sequel?

The OP specified "charecters" not real people.

A real person can be a character. You hear it said often: that Joe, Jack, Jane, Jill is such a character.

Mack Bolan, and his comic book knockoff Frank Castle.

The Man With No Name, particularly in "A Fistful of Dollars" and somewhat in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" (possibly what NoFlyBoy was referring to). I'd add Deadpool and Mel Gibson's characters in "Payback" and "The Gringo".

But in my opinion a willingness to adopt the tactics of your enemy when more conventional justice fails or is unavailable...which is the case in several of the examples put forth...isn't exactly "moral ambiguity". It's just "Two can play that game", or "I'm your huckleberry". Which reminds me:

Doc Holliday.

Rorschach from Watchmen is a good one

This guy. To be able to do so much of what he did with overwhelming odds against him while had no shoes on his feet.

I don't think John McClane was an anti-hero NFB,he was very much the hero.

Correct. He was essentially the Luke Skywalker hero archetype with the one exception that he wasn't afraid to curse.

Hero or Anti-Hero, McClane still COOL!

NFB has trouble coloring within the lines.

Han Solo? Is he a hero or antihero?



I do all right

Han Solo started out as an anti-hero (particularly if you have the original version, where he shot first), but even by the end of "A New Hope" he was starting to turn into a good guy.

William Foster from Falling Down.
William Munny, Eastwood's character from Unforgiven. Depending on how you define antihero, Gene Hackman's character from the same film could be one. He was just the sheriff trying to keep some semblance of law and order in a chaotic world.

And one from the wayback machine: Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow of radio, comic and movie fame.


My favorites would be the already mentioned Han Solo and Max Rockatansky.

Agreed that Solo was most definitely the classic "anti-hero" for most of the duration of "A New Hope". George Lucas needed to have him be that way as a contrast to Luke Skywalker and it worked great on film.

Boyd Crowder from Justified. Brilliantly portrayed by Walton Goggins, and sometimes making Raylan Givens look like the bad guy. Probably one of my all-time favourite TV show characters.

+1 on William Foster from Falling Down.
James Bond in some but not all of the 007 movies.
William Muny in Unforgiven
Ethan Edwards in The Searchers

IMHO I'd say the anti-hero descriptor would apply in the Daniel Craig and Timothy Dalton movies. Bond in those films was portrayed as a brooding secret agent who had no qualms about using brutality when it came to accomplishing the mission.

Dr. Strangelove would also be a good candidate for the title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9iTZ433zs

There is something to say for coping with the end of the world by creating a juvenile utopia

Judge Joe Dredd

(mainly the comics and Dredd. Not the stallone version.)

One of my all-time favorites is Baltar from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series.

Eh, was he not just more of a villain (at least of most of the show)?

Gaius Baltar was a fantastically written and acted character on the reimagined BSG but I would not classify him as an "anti-hero". I'd say he's really a sympathetic villain in the same vein as "Two Face" from the Batman universe.

Gaius wasn't an anti-hero. Snake Plissken, however, is a model anti-hero.

The important thing about anti-heroes is they don't frankly give a crap what happens to other folks in a story, and are in it for themselves. That their actions saved a few folks matters not to them, nor was their intention--they are happy that they got the gold, or whatever it was they were searching for.

Baltar to a tee.

Doomed the human race in the show, and also saved it. All he cared about was his own skin. Oh and Caprica-6.

I'm not sure Baltar had enough of an influential hand to save humanity, compared with the rest of the crew. He was a true piece of crap for half the series.

He went from chief science advisor to the president, to vice president, to president of the colonies.... not many people had greater influence than he.

Robert McCall, Denzel Washington's character in the Equalizer films.

Really liking at hating Homelander in the Boys right now...

They'll prolly keep the creep till the bitter end

Hell Yeah.

I liked Denzel's character in that too. I was thinking about mentioning Liam Neeson's character in the Taken films but wasn't sure if he counted as an anti-hero. He's a good guy who fought as a good agent but he definitely doesn't mess around when it comes to protecting innocense especially his daughter.

Speaking of those movies, way before they came out Val Kilmer did a great little movie called Spartan where he's essentially like Liam's and Denzel's character. He's got to go rogue to do the right thing.

Lord Summerisle from The Wicker Man.

There has to be recognition for Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont.

John Malkovich and Glen Close at their finest, as scheming aristocrats a few short years before the Revolution.
Particularly for the Marquise, who plays the Vicomte like a harpsichord.

Léon

I'd forgotten about Plissken. Excellent choice.

I really should not have forgotten about this tour de force performance by Jean Reno. What an utterly brilliant film.

If Leon, then also Mathilda.