Jack: What kind of movies do you pre­fer, the ones with the sad end­ings or the hap­py ones?

Claire: The sad ones def­i­nite­ly. I like movies that make me cry.

Jack: Then you’re with the right guy.

Jack is the lead­ing man. Such screen time is only reserved for pro­tag­o­nists, though anti-hero’s fit this mould too. You want to root for him, to dis­cov­er that in the end he’s smart enough to give up the crim­i­nal life, to stay out of trou­ble, to tru­ly appre­ci­ate the one who loves him. That’s what Claire is bank­ing on too.

She wants to ful­fill the dream that she’ll get the bad boy, and she’ll be the one for whom he gives up his crim­i­nal life. A sto­ry that’s been told time and time again, in life and on the screen. But he won’t, and that makes her want him even more.

Through their rela­tion­ship, you have a hard time believ­ing that any­one would be so self-destruc­tive to fall for a guy like this, the way you don’t believe a pro­fes­sion­al assas­sin would sud­den­ly devel­op a con­science when dis­cov­er­ing that his mark is a 12-year-old girl. But this is Hollywood, and we’re lead to believe that any­thing is pos­si­ble.

And as he cleans Claire’s blood off his bed­room floor, you real­ize that it’s hard­er to believe he was able to fill a buck­et of water from the faucet when he just got out on parole and his util­i­ty bills have been unpaid for over a year, than a girl falling in love with some­one so bad for her. After all, life has not proven oth­er­wise.

This qui­et­ly fills you with bit­ter­ness.