Unsympathetic main character / protagonist in movies.

Harvey Keitel/Reservoir Dogs
Viggo Mortenson/Eastern Promises
Louise Fletcher/One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

 

Felix Bueller.

 

Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (not the remake).

 

I feel the same about the central characters of The Wild Bunch.

 

Yeah, me too. Maybe that's what KW meant to say, that they were sympathetic antiheroes, because I imaging some people feel that way about Wild at Heart as well.

 

Noodles and Max in Once Upon A Time In America. Noodles does approach some sort of redemption in the last act.

 

Michael Caine's Alfie. Total monster.

 

All 4 in The Wages Of Fear.
Michael Douglas in a few-Wall Street, The War Of The Roses, Falling Down

 

David Essex as Jim McLean in That'll Be the Day. A complete and utter bastard.

 

DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street

 

Is that the British translation of Ferris Bueller?

 

Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire”

 

Oops! yep, that would be the one. See, he's so unsympathetic I can't even get his name right.

 

Good pick!

Blanche isn't especially sympathetic either - she's such an emotional mess than she's annoying!

 

Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Stuffing a cat into an ATM is not cool, dude!

 

perhaps the only truly correct response to this thread in cinema history. in the case of a Daniel Plainview or a Patrick Bateman or a Jake LaMotta or a Charles Foster Kane, they are fairly odious people for whom a conflict rages within the viewer. there is so much to loathe about those men yet the sheer brilliance and charisma of the actor/acting forces you into grudging support for people about whom you should feel zero sympathy. that tends to be one of the reasons I often prefer anti-heroes to more traditional protagonists: you're coerced into mercy for people about whom you might not otherwise feel anything positive. in the case of Pasolini, however, he makes no attempt to present the leads of Salo with any shred of sentimentality, decency or humanity. and indeed, I believe he would have viewed the film as an abject failure if anyone walked away with a heart-warming appreciation for people like the Bishop, President, Duke and Magistrate. Pasolini doesn't engage in any of the typical anti-hero tropes within the film and for good reason: Salo is not meant to be a romantic portrayal of a bygone era; it is a brutal depiction of what he feared could well happen again. and I tend to believe he was most likely right.

 

Exactly - look at Patrick Bateman, he's supposed to be a loathed man (at least in the book one often fears him) but almost a comic relief in the movie (which is brilliant, just an observation). When I saw Salò, I was shocked but at the same time embraced the fact that the portrayal of the four powerful men doesn't correspond with the unwritten rule of cinema that the main characters of a movie should have at least some kind of relatability and sympathy to them. Pasolini just wouldn't do that. And I think that Salò remains as important and - as you already put it - relevant as it was in 1975.

 

Anakin Skywalker

That is, if I were to acknowledge that those movies exist.

 

"You don't care about people, Hud. You don't give a damn about 'em. Oh, you got all that charm goin' for ya. And it makes the youngsters want to be like ya. That's the shame of it, 'cause you don't value nothin'. You don't respect nothin'. You keep no check on your appetites at all. You live just for yourself. And that makes you not fit to live with."

 

The two leads in Sideways.

God, I hate that movie.

Funny thing that Ferris (Felix?) Bueller was mentioned. I remember walking out of Sideways thinking not only what a shallow, pretentious film it was, but how it was Ferris and Cameron 20 years later and neither one of them grew up. This time, however, Cameron was the lead character and Ferris was a drunk who’s no longer charming.

Maybe it was the red convertible getting trashed, in pretty much the exact same way as before, but that was my lasting impression of that film.

 

I agree with your anti-"Felix Bueller" position but vehemently disagree with your anti-"Sideways" position!

 

His creepy infatuation with his daughter's friend aside, I thought Lester was likable. Maybe it was because Spacey did such an awesome job of making him likable, but I'll bet a lot of people could relate to him in the sense of being middle-aged and feeling like you are wasting away and being unhappy, and then taking control and doing things to make you happy.

 

even when he plays a heel, its hard for me not to like paul newman

 

Melissa McCarthy as the opportunistic Lee Israel, a failing writer who produces fake correspondance letters supposedly by famous authors, as dramatized in Can You Ever Forgive Me? - an ironic title, as we are never led to believe she cares enough about anybody to ask that. Out now.

 

Gary Sinise as Jimmy Shaker in "Ransom".
James Cromwell as Captain Dudley Smith in "L.A. Confidential".
Annette Bening as Myra Langtree in "The Grifters". Actually the three main characters in that one were all fairly despicable.