Sanderson - Patriot Games and Devil's Own

            In both the Patriot Games and Devil’s Own there is a antagonist that we end up liking. It isn’t the norm to have an antagonist that we tend to side with but in these films they make them likable. The antagonists are given qualities that make them likable to the audience.

            In the Devil’s Own we are immediately shown Brad Pitts character as a little boy watch his father killed. This makes us give him somewhat of a pass the rest of the movie to be violent. Because Pitt had to see such a terrible thing as a young boy we know that he can’t really help but have a violent side to him. The director made sure to give us plenty of reasons to like Pitts character. Rory (Pitt) takes a liking to Tom’s (Ford’s) youngest daughter. Rory looks out for the little girl and it shows us a very sweet and soft side of Rory. We see that he isn’t all violent and that he really does just have it out for the ones that have done him wrong. Rory is also a very quiet character, which makes him more likable. He doesn’t come off as cocky or brazen. We are shown more reasons to like Rory than we are to not like him.

            Sean Bean (Sean Miller) isn’t given as many scenes for us to see his likable side but the audience is still shown more than just violence from him. When we see his reaction to his brothers death we are shown his sensitive and caring side. Like Rory we see that Sean does have others that he truly cares for and that his life isn’t completely just about violence.

            Both characters intend to use explosives to accomplish their violent mission. Rory wants to fill a boat with explosives and drive it into a building so he can kill his enemies but he really doesn’t know who else will be in the area and whom else he may kill. Rory is willing to kill whomever he has to, to blow up this building. We see him shot at even Tom when they are both on the boat at the end. He pulled the trigger with the intention of killing Tom. This is very telling because he respects Tom and he knows that Tom has a family but he still tries to shoot him anyway. We as an audience seem to forget this because Tom’s character forgets it so quickly but the matter of the fact is that Rory would have killed anyone he had to in order to accomplish his mission.

            Sean Miller also almost kills Jack Ryan’s family. They would have just been victims of him trying to accomplish his mission and getting in the way but again he was willing to risk their lives. He didn’t stop even though he knew they could be killed.

            We see these to antagonist in a different way than we see all “bad guys”. We know that they have some good about them and at times it makes us side with them for a bit even though they have intentions to do very wrong tings.