: People have flaws. If a character is portrayed as flawless then that character comes off as having somewhat less substance than otherwise. The abduction or murder of a relative is not a character,

@Lee1909368

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People have flaws. If a character is portrayed as flawless then that character comes off as having somewhat less substance than otherwise.

The abduction or murder of a relative is not a character, it is an event. The character comes through in the way the protagonist reacts to the event. In "Taken" Liam Neeson's character is pretty bullet proof during the main part of the action but the film takes care to acknowledge (at least in passing) that Neeson's character is, in normal reality, deeply dysfunctional.

In the Jason Statham thriller Hummingbird the character study angle of a fairly thin revenge plot is extrapolated to the point where the genre of the thriller becomes de-focused. The movie is more interested in putting together the character of a man who would exact revenge for the death of someone close to them in the manner he chooses to do so rather than concentrating on the mechanics of the act itself.

EDIT: And to push the revenge trope even further the very new "Blue Ruin" presents a man getting revenge with the entire hook being that he is the least likely candidate for vengeful retribution you could probably think of. At one point someone tells him he's "weak" and he doesn't reply at all, just stands there looking mopey. This either signals the guy is not very self-aware (because he goes through a hell of a lot in the course of the movie), or that he can't deal with verbal confrontation, or that he is, at some level, deceptive in the way he presents himself. All of these are flaws and the movie seeks to make the protagonist complex and problematic in order to deepen what is, like the former examples, a fairly bland revenge narrative.

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