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The British movie Essay The implication of escape is shadowed in the present film. One treats Gal as a criminal more eagerly than a fugitive. However, this character is haunted in both direct and figurative meanings. Whereas Don abuses Gal’s stable mode of living by fierce jokes and physical violence, the whole Gal’s background abuses the hero’s soul by ominous signs (e. g. , the rock falling to the pool) and dreams. The conflict between the escapee (Gal) and the persecutor (Don and the criminal world) is revealed in the very title. In the East End vernacular, the phrase sexy beast is used as a compliment and means â€Å"a handsome chap, a reliable mate or a trustworthy accomplice† (Earnshaw 2001, p. 5). The title hints at the positive side of Gal’s London past (material wealth, friends, familiar environment) and, simultaneously, at the darkest sides of the hero’s background made explicit in the dream of a hairy beast pursuing Gal at nights. The same type of the hero as a fugitive is present in Kitano’s Hana-bi. The Japanese title of this film consists of two words, translated to English as ‘fire’ and ‘flowers’ [the English aka ‘Fireworks’]. The main character of the film, Yoshitaka Nishi (Takeshi Kitano), seems to be torn between the ‘flowers’ of his life to the mortally ill wife and the impaired friend, and the ‘fire’ of his hopeless race for peace and stability. Nishi used to be a cop. Nevertheless, hardly can this story be considered a ‘cop’ narrative. The film traces the evolution of the hero from the stage of a law-abider to the one of a fugitive and an outlaw. The narrative implicitly promotes the idea that there are certain moral principles equating a cop, a fugitive and a criminal – the love for the family, the affection for the friend, the acid mourning over acid unbearable existence. Nishi quits his beloved job to take care of his wife. He desperately needs money and borrows a large sum from yakuza. They send over young thugs to play rough with Nishi when he refuses to pay back the interest. The ex-cop assaults the intruders, thus, turning momentarily from a fugitive into a criminal. The movie provides no classification for its heroes. Instead, it shows â€Å"an endless circle† (Cannon, 1997, para. 2, lines 6-8) of the global crime net where plain people such as Nishi, the kin young policemen who replaced Nishi and Horibe, Nishi’s wife and friend try to survive and establish some kind or order and justice. As Cannon (1997, para. 4, lines 2-4) stated, the main character is the embodiment of contradiction: â€Å"[I]n one instant a warm and gentle husband, in the next a sadistic and ruthless bully†. Due to this ambivalence, Hana-bi may be referred to as a critical film which emphasises â€Å"the impossibility of heroism and the inevitability of injustice† (Rafter 2000, p. 12). An avenger The British movie Get Carter and the American film Gangs of New York provide the viewer with remarkable portraits of avengers. Chibnall and Murphy (1999, p. 4) defined revenge films as the ones â€Å"where a wronged man, denied access to the law, pursues his own path of justice†. The movie Get Carter was criticised for its â€Å"perfunctory plot, its mechanical manipulation of characters or a vision of the British underworld that relies totally on cliche† (Andrews 1971 cited Murphy 1999, p. 128). However, the treatment of the main character’s features can hardly be called mechanical. Jack Carter, the hero of the British cult film Get Carter, is â€Å"an implacable avenging angel in a black raincoat† (Billson 1991 cited Murphy 1999, p. 129) revenging on the criminals for killing his brother and seducing his niece. But despite Carter’s motivations for being an almost mythical angel of wrath, he never stopped to be a cruel criminal himself having killed four people and being responsible for even more cases of violence. Jack Carter is neither an upholder of justice nor a saviour of the weak and humble, but he operates by a strict code that he expects his colleagues and enemies to share. [†¦] Carter is confronted by a society afflicted by pornographic malaise. But his righteous anger is less about sleaze itself than about how it has leaked out of its proper underworld milieu to engulf his niece and destroy his brother. Carter is not so self-consciously evil [†¦] or [†¦] morbidly obsessed [†¦] but he does share some of the characteristics of the Jacobean revenge tragedy protagonist. A wrong has been done-less to Carter himself than to his family – which must be righted at whatever cost. (Murphy, 1999, p. 132) Carter is synthetic in his nature. On the one hand, he reaches almost legendary heights in his revengeful crusade. On the other hand, his â€Å"fussy concern with nose drops, vitamin pills and the cleanliness of British Railways cutlery† stands for his â€Å"human frailty† (Murphy 1999, p. 129). The hero of the American film Gangs of New York is neither a pure type of an avenger. On the one hand, Amsterdam Vallon infiltrates the gang of The Butcher Cutting to revenge for the death of Vallon-father. On the other hand, Amsterdam finds the substitute of the father in his once hated target. The character of Amsterdam provides an interesting synthetic type of ‘a man-on-the-run’ (he spent some years in anonymity after his father’s murder till the re-emergence in the rival gang) and ‘a man-in-disguise’.