Good Bad guys.

We saw Constantine last night. Loved it! The special effects were awesome, the vision of hell and demons appropriately disturbing (scary), and of angels and religion, interesting.

One thing I really enjoyed was the characterization. John Constantine was a fully shaded anti-hero. You couldn’t put him in a box. Even after he had attained a certain amount of growth and salvation, appropriate to his character, he couldn’t resist giving one last 'finger'. gg.

I’ve never seen the devil portrayed as he was in this movie—-in his pristine white 'godfather' suit, and bare, tarred feet. Lovely. And Gabriel the angel? As played by Tilda Swinton (she of Orlando fame) the whole twisted ambiguity and shifty androgyny of that character was so well done.

I really, really like complex characters. Ones who have a dark side, an edge, a certain sense of the unpredictable, maybe even untrustworthiness. Not necessarily because they aren’t worthy of trust, but because that character hold his/her own code ethics and honor, that may not dovetail with everyone else’s. ;-) And their growth doesn’t have to be about losing those ‘bad’ or ‘dark’ traits altogether, but more about acknowledging something larger than themselves, something they need or want bad enough that they are willing to compromise or sacrifice to have it.

In ms#2, my heroine is an alcoholic (one of those secret, binge drinkers), the hero is somewhat amoral ( a contest judge compared him to Bobby Donal from The Practice, which brought a big smile to my face. Exactly. Although I was thinking more along the lines of that essence of ‘a little too smooth, tinged with danger’ vibe that Pierce Bronson exhibits as James Bond or Thomas Crown) Obviously, my H/h have a lot of growth to achieve during the story, I was looking forward to writing it, but the plot sucked and the book stalled at chapter 8. I’ll get around to revising it one of these fine days. I love Raine and Winston way too much to leave them in their literary limbo.

One hero protagonist I’ve never gotten out of my mind is Dillon Gaynor from Anne Stuart’s Into the Fire. It’s almost a stretch to call this asshole guy a 'hero', yet he was compelling and fully dimensional. Far more than the usual ‘bad boy’ seen on the pages of many romances (contemporary counterpart to the ‘fake rakes’ of historical novel), the author didn’t just tell the reader this guy was bad, she showed us, she made us see and believe it. The rest of the book didn’t quit work for me, but I’m thinking of picking the book up again for my keeper shelf, simply because of this character’s portrayal.

Another couple of bad guys that fascinated me were Tom Cruise’s 'Vincent' in Collateral, and David Carradine’s 'Bill' from Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies. Okay, these guys were beyond bad, they were psycho. But they are far more than 2-D Snidely Whiplash EEEEEViiile. Bill loved his daughter--we *saw* that--and when he confessed to Beatrice (The Bride) that she'd broken his heart, we had to believe him when he spoke this horrible truth that had been played out in the movie: "There are consequences to breaking the heart of a murderous bastard." And then there was Vincent--pairing Tom's charming mega-watt smile with a curiously intense, empty gaze--first berating Max (Jaime Foxx) for not bringing flowers to his hospitalized mother, then urging the 'loser' Max to go after his dreams (ultimately a very sadistic and cruel urging). Complexity. I like that. (Yeah, yeah, neither of these characters ‘grew’ in the sense I laid out above. I’m talking complexity now.)

Odil isn’t dark the way I thought he’d be, I can’t pinpoint it now, but the darkness is there, and I’ll find out what it is sooner or later in the writing. Zoë, on the other hand, has characteristics I don’t like, or at least, I don’t find admirable, but I’m not going to air brush them to make her character more palatable. One of the BIG mistakes I made with ms#1 was to pull my punches.

Just thought of another (obvious) dark character, Dracula as played by Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. You really got a sense of the depth of his corruption and also of his abiding love, and unquenchable longing for his one true soulmate—his wife, Elizabeta.

Oops! One more, Clay from Kelly Armstrong’s Bitten. An unrepentant werewolf in the throes of an obsessive, unrequited (sort of) love.

Last one, I promise-- Damon Rouke, the sexy as hell, gambling, 'fights hard and hurts easy', walking gotta-a-death-wish, N'awlins homicide dectective from Penelope Williams' dark mystery-thriller Sin series of books.

Er, one more. gg. Denzel Washington's John Creasy in Man on Fire. This guy wasn't flawed, he was broken, only holding it together by some very thin and frayed threads.

So while I’m on this subject can anyone recommend some good, complex dark heroes to me (books—any genre/nongenre, movies, tv shows)?