Drive
It seems that no girl can resist a bad boy... and there have been plenty of them on the big screen over the years.
Endless Love sees Alex Pettyfer take on a bad boy role, who turns into a prince when he falls in love.
To celebrate the release of Endless Love, we take a look at some of the best big screen bad boys.
- The Driver - Drive
'The Driver' has no clear reasoning behind the choices he makes at the start of Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film, Drive. Those who are in his life must abide by the rules he has set - all of which serve to protect him whilst at the same time providing the danger he has come to need in his life.
A part-time stuntman and mechanic, The Driver is a Bad Boy who does bad things with a cold detachment that only changes when he falls for his neighbour, Irene, and her son.
It soon becomes clear that Irene is no stranger to bad boys when her husband returns home from a stint in prison. His involvement with Irene quickly puts her in danger, leading to cracks forming in the cold mask he has come to adopt.
In fact, the carefully constructed control snaps when he brutally beats a man to death in front of her. It is this brutality that on the one hand gives us a glimpse into what is beneath the detached personality, but on the other also tells us that control over his emotions is vital.There is no middle ground with The Driver. He is either disconnected from others completely or he is a violent murderer.
That he is so able to control his baser instincts of violence when it comes to Irene, it is clear that The Driver is only capable of controlling one aspect of himself at a time.
The fact that he is so volatile makes his feelings for Irene so much more frightening, leaving him with being unable to do anything else but leave her. He is by no means good by the end of the film, but he is better.
- Don Jon - Don Jon
Jon 'Don Jon' Martello is the kind of Bad Boy girls contemporary society would recognize most. Drinking hard and partying even harder, his fear of intimacy manifests itself in his addiction to pornography. His denial that he is addicted to it only adds to the idea that he fears both emotional and physical intimacy.
Through his own words he finds little gratification from porn or the women he beds. Orgasm is the ultimate goal with each of his liaisons, which is precisely why he prefers porn to sex with a woman.
Jon is selfish with himself, giving little of himself to his partners at every turn. as evidenced by his unwillingness to look into the eyes of a woman during sex. For Jon, intimacy is not a hardship as he claims but is in fact rooted in his fear of disappointing his partner.
Indeed, he does this very thing when his choice of partner in Barbra Sugarman is based solely on the fact that she withholds her body from him at the beginning of their relationship.
She is an obstacle he wants to overcome for the mere satisfaction of having her rather than true love. It is ironic therefore that his attempts at bettering himself in the name of his ‘love’ for Barbra leads him to a woman whose beauty does not blind him.
A woman still suffering the aftermath of the death of her family, Esther embodies the very qualities in a woman that Jon has always considered to be weak - those of kindness, truth, and living in reality.
It is only when Jon opens himself up to relinquishing his selfishness both physically and emotionally that he becomes the good guy. Intimacy replaces orgasm, detachment transforms into emotion and he is all the better for it.
- Patrick Verona - Ten Things I Hate About You
It is a similar fear of intimacy that drives Patrick Verona in 10 Things I Hate About You. Money is his motivation for pursuing a relationship with Kat without which he would not even contemplate a romantic encounter with a girl.
That Patrick fears intimacy is no excuse for his deception, convincing the reluctant Kat to fall for him. His redemption is therefore a lesson in the repercussions of deceit in his realisation that he has fallen in love with her after all.
That he has lied and manipulated Kat into falling for financial gain only makes the betrayal that much worse.
Patrick’s true redemption therefore comes in the fulfillment of an almost childlike desire in Kat - of being swept off her feet by a Prince. An imperfect Prince to match the equally imperfect Princess.
- Jim Stark - Rebel Without a Cause
A mutual understanding of feeling like an outcast within their community brings the two lovers, Jim and Judy, in Rebel Without a Cause together - setting them on a path of equally mutual destruction.
When a knife fight turns into a game that leads to the death of one of his enemies, Jim retreats further into himself when he is blamed for the tragedy.
In Judy, Jim finds the understanding and acceptance he longs for from his family. Relinquishing the indifference towards their son is the only thing the Starks can do to save Jim's fast path towards emotional destruction.
Only Judy's love for Jim can prevent his downward spiral, acting as a temporary salve to the pain of his feelings of rejection and loneliness in time for his parents to learn a tough lesson in love. To merely love is not enough but to express love can also heal the deepest of wounds.
- Landon Carter - A Walk To Remember
Landon Carter’s life concerns little else but his own happiness in Adam Shankman’s A Walk to Remember. That he cannot see beyond himself leaves him blind to the things he disregards as insignificant in his life, namely love, kindness, and life beyond high school.
That he hurts and embarrasses classmate Jamie during the beginning of their friendship betrays his own path to goodness. His selfishness and blindness to anything and everything that is bigger than himself pushes him closer to the precipice of literally having nothing but his own arrogance and cruelty.
It is only after he is able to recognize Jamie’s beauty and the possibilities that she incites in Landon both literally and emotionally that Landon’s attitude begins to change.
That he must for once suffer true loss when Jamie dies is the hardest lesson Landon must learn and that he continues to not only love Jamie but to live a life of endless possibility long after she is gone represents a transformation from the typical teen Bad Boy into a good guy after all.
- Mr. Darcy - Pride And Prejudice
Now the obvious choice here would of course be George Wickham in Jane Austen’s most famed novel, Pride and Prejudice. Outrageously flirtatious and with the sins to match his devilish good looks, Wickham is as bad as they come.
Aloof, stubborn, and outwardly rude, Darcy is not the charmingly handsome bachelor many think he is. Openly detesting Elizabeth Bennett for her lack of beauty, her willful challenge of his opinions, and stubbornness to match his own, the love story between Darcy and Elizabeth is filled with open hostility rather than heat and passion.
Ironically, blindness drives them both towards one another, for not only are both Elizabeth and Darcy unaware of the other’s feelings, but they both equally blind to their own emotions. Indeed, Darcy’s initial proposal of marriage where he expresses, '[i]n vain have I struggled' in direct reference to his feelings for her, speaks more of his own emotional blindness than anything else.
For Darcy, his reluctance to love Elizabeth is wholly justified and is a nuisance to him. He, as a man of importance and stature, is a man deserving of a woman who should be grateful that he would consider a woman of Elizabeth’s class.
Vanity blinds Darcy to the reasons he has chosen to fall for Elizabeth over every other more eligible woman. And it is this vanity, this unwillingness to see his own faults that makes Darcy one of literature’s most famous Bad Boys.
Blindness can be overcome and it is this redemptive quality that ultimately makes him the Bad Boy turned good instead of George Wickham.
- Mr Rochester - Jane Eyre
The one thing Jane is sure to remind readers of in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is the image of the young woman reaching for the idealized kind of love.
A Prince Charming Mr Rochester is not. Flirting and then coldly distancing himself from Jane, his affections towards her change as quickly as the direction of the wind. For Rochester, it is not enough to be the object of Jane’s love. Indeed, if he were a true gentleman he would consider the consequences upon Jane’s reputation should the seduction of the Governess of his household come to be heard of.
His initial indignation towards Jane has little to do with protecting her reputation; rather it merely serves to manipulate Jane into thinking that her beloved Mr Rochester has suffered with the guilt and possible repercussions of his feelings.
Rochester’s scheming only comes to light when Jane learns that he is already married on her wedding day. But her pain and feelings of betrayal are very soon cast away once Rochester confesses the truth.
Even then Jane’s pain is on his behalf. Of course we only have Rochester’s word that his wife is the psychotic harpy he portrays her to be but he banks on Jane’s love for him to cloud her usual judgement.
Jane’s worth is only further proven when she leaves Rochester regardless and it is this lesson in worth that Rochester must learn before he is redeemed and reunited with Jane.
It is only after he lets Jane go, only after his crazed wife burns his stately home to the ground, taking his sight and mobility along with her that Jane returns to him - a new man no longer a liar and manipulator, but quite simply the man Jane had always longed for.
Endless Love is out now.