What Lou does isn't necessarily morally correct, but I was wondering why others choose to like him? Personally I don't feel it is just to advance the storyline but instead because their are parts of Lou that people can associate with, do you agree? What are your personal opinions?
shareIt is a 2-part answer.
I like the way he always goes into a new situation and challenge with a smile on his face, eager to figure it out and make it work for him. Purely focused on what he wants to accomplish. This is an admirable and useful characteristic for getting ahead in any endeavor.
Unfortunately he chooses to use his skills for dishonest and illegal ways to get ahead and for that I dislike his character greatly.
..*.. TxMike ..*..
Make a choice, to take a chance, to make a difference.
I chose to like him for a few reasons. Firstly, it's Jake Gyllenhaal. He has amazing eyes and dreamy aesthetics and even before I sat down I was 100% sure I was gonna support him.
Secondly, I myself look up to Lou. He doesn't sit down and fall into unemployment. He has no qualifications or any notable experience yet within a few weeks he can afford a Mustang. It's hard for people with degrees to get jobs yet Lou does it with a £500 camera and a lot of ingenuity. Sure he does immoral things but you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelette. I don't think Lou does these things for money, he only buys things in the film to benefit his work; car, camera, employee, GPS. he doesn't wear more expensive clothes as the film goes on, it's all to benefit his work. I think he does these things to be the best he can at the thing he does. To be successful. What's wrong with that.
First of all it's a Dodge Challenger.
And secondly, if you don't see what's wrong with what he does, you're probably a serious psychopath yourself.
Taking picture of your buddy in the throes of death is cool if it makes you money?
Far out, the guy was fundamentally unlikable, he was weasel-like, he was greedy, he was kinda revolting.
I find it very interesting that you find him acceptable.
Taking picture of your buddy in the throes of death is cool if it makes you money?
What a great question. I think what he's doing is largely terrible, but I'll be lying if I said I don't want to see him succeed.
shareI wanted him to get taken down by either Rick or Nina, just not that police biatch. These days I'm no fan of law enforcement aka thugs with badges, and these were played very realistic.
Under our clothes, we are all naked! But bare female nipples, genitals and unclothed buttocks constitute nudity, not bare-chested men nor either sex in shorts or swimsuits.
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Everyone is fairly terrible on some level or another. Lou Bloom is very open about it, that's refreshing.
Also he seems humble about it, most people seem to wear their smug self-assurance on their sleeve, more to convince themselves than anyone else. Lou Bloom does not. He seems to know that he is a moral degenerate and he has accepted that.
Did he really do anything that immoral? Maybe the manhole covers but the rest, I don't know...
He stole a bike, ok... what did that guy do to get a $3000 bike in the first place? Probably something worse than stealing bikes.
He stole copper, fence, and manhole covers. Of any of those I see the manhole covers as the only real immoral part. Copper is like anything else, it comes and it goes, he's just along for the ride... If he didn't steal it soemone else would and they'd probably buy crack with it to smoke while they go victimize someone else. The fence was obviously not very good at its job or it would have at least protected itself from robbery... But those manhole covers could very easily create serious health risks for people so I find that part particularly disturbing.
I don't care about the security guard. Like the subpar fence if he was competent he wouldn't have had a problem. Since he wasn't its like natural selection. Also the positive function of fences and security guards is highly debatable. Resource monopolization is bad for society.
But the rest, recording people as they die, chasing injuries and death around town... What's wrong with that? People live, people die. Just as much good could come from them being on TV as there may be bad from those same actions. At least this way someones death put food in his mouth and a roof over his head, isn't that better than nothing? I think so.
He only gave Rick $30 a night, so he was living in a garage. At the same time he was making enough money to buy a car that's worth $30,000 at the very least. Just minutes before Rick's death he threatened to physically hurt him. He also was directly responsible for Rick's death and left him to die in the streets. He even kept threatening him to his face while he was dying! And In the end, it becomes very probable that he killed the security guard as well. He wasn't chasing injuries and death, he was causing it.
share*** Basically this whole post is spoilers ***
Rick was free to leave whenever he wanted.
Rick was free to start his own company and buy his own 30k car whenever he wants.
Rick threatened Lou's lifestyle. That's dangerous and now he knows that. Lou offered him $10,000 for one nights work and that wasn't enough for Rick. F--- Rick.
If that guard had been competent, he would still be alive. Since he wasn't, he was a fraud and it was only a matter of time. If it wasn't Lou that pulled his number it would have been some random crackhead. Life is a competition and that guard lost.
Similarly, the other stringer was trying to edge Lou out by removing all possible market share, monopolizing the field. He had to expect Lou would have a problem with that. Just business.
I'm not shook up about the guard or rick, both were trying to destroy Lou's life so they could prop up theirs, and they weren't very good at what they were doing, why should Lou allow them to tear down what he works so hard for? He put more effort into being bad than they did into being good, he deserved to win.
And look at the positive effect: Lou stopped the criminals that conducted violent home invasions and killed whole families and shot cops. Rick would not have, that other camera crew would not have. The dead security guard would not have.
Only Rick was the one who said to call the cops. And because Lou didn't, a cop got killed. But that cop just wasn't competent, right?
Rick isn't free to do do something he can't. Just as Lou isn't free to choose a different personality. Rick is an extremely insecure person who could never start his own business. Lou could never work under a boss, everyone is a slave to their personality.
And that guard not being competent? Do you know what kind of people become security guards? Not the strongest kind. I know because I was one and all the people who trained with me had their own kind of problems. But none of them had enough drive to be their own boss. So when people -who can only ever have boring jobs like that- encounter a force of nature like Lou, there's nothing they can do.
Lou didn't deserve to win, just as Rick didn't deserve to lose.
Nobody 'deserves' anything because everyone is an accident of randomness.
Lou was going to call the cops anyways. Maybe he wouldn't have done it in the middle of a restaurant but Rick was getting pushy and fidgety.
Rick's shortcomings as a person are not Lou's problem. It's not like Lou just randomly killed people. You had to do something pretty specific to get in Lou's way, and eventually he is forced to make a 'them or me' decision, and can you really blame him for choosing his own best interests over someone elses? Especially someone else that is currently attacking him in some way?
And yes the cops were incompetent. They knew what they were walking into and they did it anyways. They should have had snipers in position to deal with the gunmen before ever exposing themselves and accelerating the problem. Or at least some guys covering them from outside through the window. So if the guy moves for his gun he's dead from across the street before he ever gets close to firing on anyone, but still had the opportunity to surrender. Before the cops got there, everything was cool and the guys were just eating. So they could have just let them eat and catch them on the way out, or at the first stop sign, whatever. Or disable their vehicle while they're eating. Lots of better options than 'lets walk in there smiling and laughing like dumb aholes'. Not Lou's fault that it was the plan they ended up going with. He gave them highly accurate intel.
Effort is the investment in rewards you deserve. Lou brought more of it to the table, he deserved to win. You don't always get what you deserve but effort is what determines, to me, what your share should have been. It's not all chaos, it's a complex system and without signal processing to filter out the noise, it looks like static.
I think your reasoning is seriously flawed and your understanding of basic law is even more so. You can't seriously base your whole reasoning for liking Lou as a character by saying that basically everyone else in the movie is incompetent. It's okay to like him because you appreciate/admire his psychopathic tendencies but that's a very clear distinction you have not made in your post.
Lou is a classic psychopath. Everything about his behavior-- from a charismatic persona, meticulously planned details, his inability to form emotional bonds with people -- all of it is typical ASPD diagnostic right out of DSM manual. If you revisit the movie with the thought that he is a psychopath, literally every single detail about his character is a neat checkmark next to his psychopathic tendencies.
He pays for sex (by exclusively selling to Nina) because he can't emotionally connect with her. To him there is no meaning to friendship or love, it is all simply a business transaction. As far as your statement that the cops in the movie were incompetent, you couldn't be far more wrong. First of all, if you view it in terms of real-life, not a staged scripted movie, cops are human beings and will undoubtedly make minor mistakes in high-risk scenarios. Even if we manage to forget that, cops can't just go in a restaurant and point guns at random citizens. That's a very serious violation that will no doubt get you in a whole lot of trouble. The great thing about this movie is that they got the cops' response (mostly) right. To recap, Lou made the call. Sounded very convincing but there is no way for the cops to know that Lou is NOT just a random prankster. It would've taken them a while to connect the dots between Lou the caller vs. Lou the reporter who also filmed the crime scene since 911 dispatchers know very little about the ongoing crime, they are literally only there to relay the message. More often than not, the calls are taken very seriously which is why you see a cop car pull up and then another one pull up in less than 5 minutes followed by another one.
As for the two cops who enter the restaurant, that's standard procedure. Had they waited outside, the killers could have easily taken hostages and THAT is something you NEVER want. Also, these men just killed two people so they were on somewhat high alert to begin with. Any sign or a person coming in the restaurant who might have mentioned "cops outside" would've made them resort to taking hostages to escape. They did exactly what any cop (in real-life) would do. They causally entered the restaurant to assess the situation and gauge a better perspective of the "possible" killers. You can literally see them "fake laugh" while pretending to order, all the while eyeing the suspects for signs of a concealed weapon. It isn't until the other 2 cops enter (4 total now) that really freaks the killers and they panic and start to shoot. Snipers take time. No, they don't sit around the police station waiting to be called. There's no way snipers would've had the chance to take position in the short amount of time they had to respond. Again, hostages is a big problem. You've got to clear the area, move residents/potential targets out of the way, and any commotion of that sort would probably not have gone unnoticed.
As for Lou, he was a continued hinderance to law officials. Had he given up the killers' identity, there would be no bloodshed of innocent residents/cop (probably). But that wouldn't make for a good story for Lou so he puts his motives above even the basic regard for human life. His only motivation for his actions is his own personal pursuit and fulfillment of goals. There is absolutely nothing else he cares about or deems worthy to care about. Lou did not bring "more" to the table, not at all. In fact, he brought much less. Had he been able to shed an ounce of empathy for people around him, it would've made him stop to consider the impact of his actions on their lives. In fact, the only reason his choice appear so "easy" in the movie is because they require purely objective thinking. There was no emotional "baggage", per se, weighing Lou's conscious down or questioning the morality of his actions.
I'm too busy to respond to your post right now, its so long, and so stupid, it will take a while to put on my waders and really dissect all the absurdity.
For now, go look up phrenology and consider, that's where your heroes the psychologists come from. They are quacks, they same ones that invented the term 'afluenza' to get that creep off the hook for killing 4 people. Yeah, lets hold them up as the standard of objective virtue, pfffft.
Stupid?
He tried to politely explain to you that you find the actions of a psychopath positive because the people around him were stupid.
You have serious issues.
Lou is looking out for himself because no one else will. He should just lay over and die because you don't like what it takes for him to live? Like I said, my biggest problem with anything he did was taking manhole covers since that puts innocent strangers at risk.
Cry about, lol.
EDIT: Cutting his competitors brake lines was pretty screwed up too.
Hot dang, the answer made you so mad you went full on stupid. Couldn't even type properly, could ya? Not sure what greedy judges, lawyers, or affluenza has to do with this? Or the fact that you claim all psychologists are a fraud, for that matter. Are you sure you're not mentally incompetent? Did you miss the point of the movie entirely? He is a psychopath. The fact that the movie plays it in a brilliantly positive spin (you either take advantage of or get taken advantage of), in no way, implies that Jake G's character isn't deviod of human empathy or emotion.
shareP.S. Lou isn't some poor soul who's simply fending off the harsh world just to survive. That's so drab! Oh no, Lou is so much more! In Pacino's word "Guilt is like a bag of *beep* bricks. All you gotta do is set it down." And oh does Lou ever set it down. For him, it's all a game. If it was him simply struggling to survive, he would've quit when he got close to danger. That's again, drab. Lou doesn't care for survival, all that's important to him is his ultimate goal of seeing how far he can go with manipulating people. He almost went to jail, yet instead of calling it a day at the end, you see him hiring even more "interns." Classic Lou. And that's what makes him so much fun to watch; he has no guilt and therefore no barriers impeding the extent he will go to for his own personal gratification.
share"They got in Lou's way & forced him to tap them out because it's 'them or me' so can you blame him."
I know that not an exact qoute but I hope you're just a troll bc you sound like you have a psychopathic mentality if you think you can just threaten or eliminate an employee for using his leverage in salary negotiations or kill your competition bc they were beating you to the scene and getting better footage. Society & business do not work that way.That "them or me kill or be killed" is the mentality of a street gangbanger before they kill someone for their Tennis Shoes.
If you and I are friends and I'm free to leave whenever I want, but you kill me, its not that big a deal because I could have left?
I think you're missing a fundamental truth here. He set Rick up to die, he obviously will be pursuing greater and more horrific crimes to fill, its obvious his character would be happy to hurt anyone to get his money.
He was a greedy, selfish, hateful, spiteful, petty human being.
He was interesting but it amazes me that you actually describe his behaviour as decency, really demonstrates the true issue with society doesn't it ?
We accept monsters like this as long as they MAKE MONEY.
I think you're missing a fundamental truth here. He set Rick up to die
It was his friend he filmed dieing, seems a little *beep* up.
He could have stopped a murder, he films it instead.
Did you watch the film?
If the cops had responded professionally none of the following chase would have happened. Why aren't you blaming the cops for setting up Lou and friend to die? If Lou had not phoned in very specific tips to the cops the killers would have gotten away scott free. You don't even have any real evidence that lou set up his assistant to die. By one way of looking at the scenario, Lou's actions were virtuous, he checked out the accident first, it looked clear, what's he supposed to do, check the pulse of the criminal? If his assistant had listened to Lou's instructions earlier and gotten out of the vehicle, he would have been well paid, alive, and well. It's his fault he died, not Lou's. And of course Lou filmed it, why wouldn't he? That's his job. He should stop doing it all the sudden because now it's someone he knows?
shareCount me as another who did not support him or want to see him succeed. He was a narcissist and a sociopath. He reminded me a lot of Ted Bundy, starting with petty crime and constant stealing etc. This was like Ted Bundy if he focused his energies on a career and getting ahead rather than sex crimes and murder.
I was really hoping someone would nail his ass at the end, he'd get arrested for something. but nope.
You would be astounded by the amount of people who show psychopathic qualities in one degree or another. And most of them don't get nailed because they know exactly what they are doing.
shareClinically, most CEO's are psychopaths, sociopaths, or both.
shareAh! So that's why I never made it past Product Quality Manager. That's good to know.
..*.. TxMike ..*..
Make a choice, to take a chance, to make a difference.
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Actually, CEO's often have a lot of sociopathic and narcissistic traits that help them in their careers and ambitions. But I doubt most of them are clinically diagnosable as sociopathic, but probably most of them are seriously narcissistic.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/drishtikone/2013/10/are-ceos-and-entrepreneurs-psychopaths-multiple-studies-say-yes/
Are they slow? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
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I think it was 4% they said met criteria for pd which is 4 times average. I do think that many sociopathic and narcissistic traits are very adaptive and show up in a lot of outwardly successful people, but probably at the expense of personal relationships, but I don't think they care. Their charm can be attractive and make them appear to be nice on the surface - socialized. Their grandiosity comes across as self-confidence. Their lack of empathy seems like pragmatism and unsentimentality - strength. But most people with personality disorders aren't successful, that's why they are called "disorders", so I doubt that most of those CEOs with the traits manifest the characteristics to the extent they should be labeled sociopaths.
Everyone can't be that way, though, because self-interested people will destroy all the resources with their short term goals. I recall a man, an entrepreneur, who assumed the consequences of his actions wouldn't show up until after he was dead, so, he didn't think it mattered - and he had kids. But it was impossible for him to see beyond his own immediate self interest.
Assuming the opposite of narcissism and sociopathy is altruism, then we can see that altruism benefits the group at the expense of the individual while narcissism benefits the individual at the expense of the group. But, it isn't always perfect, and sometimes self interests coincide with the interests of the group. And altruism can even have unintended negative consequences that hurt the group. It could be the difference between successful sociopaths like CEOs and career criminals is simply the ability to see the big picture and plan ahead.
Are they slow? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
Another anonymous anticorporate *beep* using his corporate powered internet on his corporate built laptop fighting the system!
shareNo it's a plainly obvious fact. You think businesses are successful today simply because someone had a good idea and worked hard at it? Grow up. A successful business is made today on two principle concepts: 1) Maximizing profits by 2) minimizing labor costs
And that sounds nice and clinical until you consider exactly what it implies. To succeed you must take the people that help you and rip them off exactly as much as they will possibly tolerate without leaving you. Cut their wages down to the bone, and if possible, make them rely on your pittance for their very existence so they simply can't leave. These are the people that keep the CEO's and executives in a nice cushy lifestyle, and they are deliberately attacked by the people they're helping. That is a twisted, perverse way to treat your friends and allies. Psychotic and obviously so.
The other end of the equation is taking the general public and making them pay as much as possible for what you produced as cheaply as possible. Are the trinkets over priced, unnecessary, toxic and produced by child slaves? Who cares! Charge as much as you can possibly get away with, because 'thats what the shareholders demand'.
There is no way to be a successful business person in today without being a twisted, depraved, TERRIBLE excuse for a human being. Your pathetic attempts to justify their actions fall flat. You think we should tolerate this pattern of behavior because 'we are using corporate products'? By that logic, the nazi's would still be going strong because VW's are decent vehicles, or because so many people like 9mm cartridges, or because rockets are widespread. What someone produces does not justify how they produce it.
Count me as another who did not support him or want to see him succeed. He was a narcissist and a sociopath. He reminded me a lot of Ted Bundy, starting with petty crime and constant stealing etc. This was like Ted Bundy if he focused his energies on a career and getting ahead rather than sex crimes and murder.I also did not support him. But in addition, it seemed to me as if he were almost retarded or dull to the point of fetal alcohol syndrome (i.e. where the place that a conscience should be is just a total void). For example, the scene where he was selling stolen items to the guy and then started up a job interview, totally oblivious to the fact that no sane businessman would hire a thief, and then the guy said, straight up: "I wouldn't hire a thief". Duh!!!
I was really hoping someone would nail his ass at the end, he'd get arrested for something. but nope.
As a viewer you dont always need to support the main character, Lou Bloom was an awkward person. For me he wasnt likeable but very interested to watch. I really despised him after what happen to his assistant Rick after he got shot. It was such a heartless thing to do, to film him dieing was shocking. He didnt even have any reaction when he got shot.
shareThe whole film seems designed with this in mind, I find it hard believe people like this character, he is meant to be unlikable.
Sure you might find his tenacity or perseverance a little inspiring but you certainly wouldn't wanna be the guys friend.
He was definitely heartless, but very interesting.
One of the best films I've ever seen, really got me this one.
Yes. Jake is beautiful. Sexy, really sexy.
But that doesn't mean I would root for his crazy character.
He did sacrifice, so much so that he even let his partner die. The new partners we saw in the end of the movie is probably gonna have the same destiny.
Who says we are supporting him? He was a horrible person
I don't think Elroy intended him to be sympathetic or that we should like him. Nor did Jake for that matter.
He's a villain, a nasty one to that. Fascinating to watch yes. But that doesn't make him likeable.
I saw repeatedly on the board people saying things like "he is not violent" or "he wasnt violent to begin with".
Thats kinda bs.
He most definitely was violent. If I remember correctly its shown in the very first scene.