Rocky from Angels with Dirty Faces is the one standing up to the corrupt and cowardly main villain, keeping him from holding onto 100 grand he doesn't deserved. However, Rocky is a criminal himself and he only wants the money to keep it for himself, not out of any sense of justice.
Cain Burgress from Avengement is by his own admission a violent killer, but his targets are criminals far worse than him and in the end, part of his scheme against his brother his returning the money Lincoln stole from his victims.
The main characters from The Boondock Saintsare this trope, as they are two badass Irish brothers running around Boston with crosses and bringing down the Wrath of God on the scumbags of the Earth.
Dante and Randal, the main characters of Clerks and Clerks: The Animated Series, are examples — not especially moral and not especially successful. Jay and Silent Bob, recurring characters in The View Askewniverse, also count, being crude, rude drug dealers who nevertheless dispense wisdom and help out the main characters — when they aren't the main characters themselves.
Pam Grier's character in Coffy. She's a nurse-turned-vigilante who goes after drug dealers and mafiosi in order to avenge her little sister (who became addicted to heroin when she was eleven) and her childhood friend (a police officer who was beaten into a coma for refusing to sell out to organized crime). Her victims are depicted as getting what's coming to them, but she does readily resort to lethal force, fights dirty, and at one point physically threatens an informant to get information.
Cannibal Apocalypse. The main character Norman spends the first half of the film trying to resist the urge to eat human flesh but once he meets up with his two former war friends Norman finally gives into his urges and runs of with his other cannibal friends. Despite this he's never seen to eat anyone and only kills those who are attacking him and his friends. At the end he kills another cannibal that tries to attack his wife. Though it fails.
Richard from Dead Man's Shoes is another sympathetic Serial Killer; his victims are the gang who bullied his mentally disabled younger brother when they were teenagers and drove him to suicide.
Sarah from The Descent. What, she doesn't seem all too "anti," to you? Keeeep watching.
Wikus in District 9 is an example of this: cowardly and selfish, he displays little to no empathy for the aliens except under the most extreme circumstances such as being forced to shoot one against his will. Luckily, he manages to redeem himself later on after he learns the truth and is appalled.
Dredd is willing to do anything to uphold the law as written. While he cares about Mega City and the people he protects, he tortures and kills perps even when they've already surrendered. Regardless, he is also shown using only the proper amount of force when needed and doesn't shoot to kill until the other options are expired. For example not firing on the van in the opening scene until they run over an innocent, and using stun rounds on a pair of scared, stupid kids. He also shows willingness to break the rules when it counts. Instead of flunking Anderson for losing her primary weapon, he gives her the pass she deserves. Likewise, he refuses to execute a murder suspect on a "mere" 99% certainty of guilt.
Anderson is a conflicted version. Although depicted as a kinder, gentler judge compared to Dredd, she nonetheless kills an unarmed perp at Dredd's urging (as under the law, that's what his punishment is), but is reluctant and soon also feels awful on learning that he had a family. She later mostly kills perps only in defense and is insistent on mercy to one who'd been forced into committing his crimes. However, she does also shoot some more who are down, showing it gets easier. She acts more like Dredd in the end.
Most of the characters in Exam are anti-heroes, running the entire gambit.
Matsu, the protagonist of the Female Prisoner Scorpion films is an ordinary woman imprisoned for trying to kill her corrupt detective boyfriend, who arranged her rape by Yakuza purely so he could catch the rapists in the act and move in on their business. She's perfectly harmless unless you wrong her; the problem is, she's so determined to escape so she can take vengeance that the warden and all the guards hate her, and the mass punishment everyone gets when she tries to break out means most of the prisoners hate her too, so she's constantly the target of someone's vendetta. And she carries a very strong grudge. Being a convict, she uses any means she can to survive and do what she has to do: she'll bludgeon dogs to death, she'll hack arms off arresting cops, she'll contrive to make others stab guards when aiming for her. This also means she has no mercy whatsoever, as anyone who she wants vengeance on learns sooner or later.
Ferris, the protagonist of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He's a nice guy, but he lies to his parents so he can ditch school, and persuades Cameron to steal his dad's fancy car.
Seth Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn is not a good person. He's a convicted criminal with blood on his hands who just so happens to be less prone to violence than his Ax-Crazy brother Richie. He can be counted on to keep his word, but it doesn't mean much when Richie disregards it and Seth fails to punish him despite being pissed at him. But while Seth starts the film as a Villain Protagonist, when the vampires start coming out of the woodwork, his skill, experience, and leadership turn him into the closest thing to a hero in the group.
Kable from Gamer is the Unscrupulous Hero type. He is a death-row inmate, battles his fellow prisoners in a violent online game called "Slayers," his every move controlled by a young gamer's remote device. But, to a resistance group that opposes the game's inventor, Kable is a critical component of their plan to end the inventor's form of high-tech slavery.
Get Shorty. Chili, our protagonist is a shylock who wants to retire from kneebreaking so he can get into producing movies. Depending on one's experience in Hollywood, this could be seen as Chili going from bad to worse.
When he's not destroying Tokyo on a daily basis, Godzilla is often saving the world from some other giant monster.
In Godzilla (2014), the only reason why Godzilla hunts the Mutos is not because he wants to stop their destruction, but because their two species are natural enemies (he is stating in-film to be hunting them). Yet ultimately he is a force for the greater good of mankind, restoring balance to the world and unintentionally saving the human race by opposing the Mutos. Of course, in the process he destroys two major cities and kills tens of thousands of people. He's a 350 foot tall radioactive creature, finesse is not exactly his strong suit and morality isn't exactly his concern when he has the mind of a wild animal.
Seth Rogen as Britt Reid in The Green Hornet. A spoiled, stupid, attention-seeking rich brat who cares about no-one but himself, but does have a level of altruism, and who does try at the end of the film to change his ways.
In the film I'm Your Woman, Cal is something of this, as he is overall a good guy, but he is also somewhat morally ambiguous. He is very willing to kill others to protect those he cares about. Throughout the movie, his having a Dark and Troubled Past is hinted at.
The guys In Bruges would be shining examples of this trope, if anti-heroes were allowed to shine. Even the villain is Affably Evil and has some very clear principles.
Hello, Inglourious Basterds. You want to run around WWII-era France and use guerrilla warfare to kill Nazis, even though you all have the same kind morals as they do? Okay, but make sure your most badass member uses a baseball bat.
In Into the Storm (2009) Churchill is portrayed as a Pragmatic Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Basically every character in the movie recognizes Churchill is stubborn, arrogant, ill-tempered man, but they also recognize he is the one who can save western civilization from destruction.
James Bond is perhaps the definitive example of an anti-hero in film. Despite films always ending with him saving the world from some sort of evil force, he resorts to some insanely unethical measures to achieve this goal: He'll rush into a warehouse with guns a'blazing while its inhabitants are just going about their business, manipulate people into doing some of his dirty work for him, bribe people with money, etc. To top it off, none of this out of any kind of compassion or sense of morality so much as it's out of obligation to his duties as an MI6 agent. Sean Connery and Daniel Craig's versions of Bond, in particular, are about as far from traditionally heroic as you can possibly get without becoming a full fledged villain although Craig’s Bond softens in No Time to Die upon becoming a Family Man. Pierce Brosnan's Bond, while generally smoother and less harsh than Craig's or Dalton’s Bonds, is still quite comfortable in the antihero role.
Perhaps best underlined in Skyfall, during the word-association exercise:
The eponymous John Doe: Vigilante is a vicious, brutal Serial Killer. . . of a cornucopia of Asshole Victims, mostly child molesters/abusers, rapists, and abusive husbands/boyfriends. Coupled with the fact that his own wife and daughter were murdered by such a person—the very thing that spurred his killing spree, and its hard to hate the guy, or at least not see his point of view.
Loo in the "Fistful of Yen" sequence of The Kentucky Fried Movie is a parody example. He only agrees to infiltrate the villain's lair because it gives him the chance to kill fifty, maybe sixty people.
The Bride in the Kill Bill movies due to her morally objectionable actions. Granted, she is better than most of those she's getting revenge against save for arguably Vernita and O-Ren, but she does work as an assassin, before and after the wedding party massacre, and even though she had sympathetic reasons for doing so, her faking her death and lying about the paternity of her daughterresulted in the deaths of eight innocent people.
The Last Boy Scout: Joe Hallenbeck is a grumpy, nihilistic, misogynistic, and somewhat sleazy private detective who everyone accurately thinks of as a lowlife. Still, he has a sense of honor and compared to the people he's fighting he's 'The Last Boy Scout'.
Lawn Dogs has two of them, adult Trent and 10-year-old Devon. Both cause mischief in town, but both are really the only likable characters in the film, as well as the main characters. Devon is very anti, however, when she threatens her own father at gunpoint and steals his wallet in an attempt to help Trent escape.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance changed the Western hero from the clean cut sheriff who cleaned up the town and dispensed justice with a gun to the worn down grizzled antihero — who dispensed justice with a gun.
Mac and Kelly from Neighbors (2014) are just trying to raise their daughter in peace. However they are also far less mature then they like to pretend and very willing to play dirty to get rid of the fraternity, including committing very serious property damage and trying to set up a relationship between Pete and Brooke (Teddy's best friend and girlfriend) without displaying any qualms about it.
The Old Man & the Gun: The eponymous old bank robber Forrest Tucker is a thrill-seekingGentleman Thief who would normally be a Villain Protagonist, but his friendly personality and lack of violence make him sympathetic, so his obsession with bank robbing plays more as a tragedy.
In Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randall Patrick McMurphy is a sleazy, violent, and sometimes downright insane convict. He's still not as bad as Nurse Ratched.
Porter, Mel Gibson's character in Payback. A film whose tagline was "Get ready to root for the bad guy!" In the Director's Cut, however, he's a more straightforward Villain Protagonist.
Pirates of the Caribbean — Captain Jack Sparrow. While you can generally count on him to do the right thing in the end, most of the time he's a largely amoral, perpetually intoxicated, marginally sane rogue who's out only for himself (and occasionally people he likes). And we love him for it.
Plunkett & Macleane's main protagonists come across as heroic, despite being outlaws, due in no small part to how evil their nemesis General Chance is.
Walker from Point Blank (1967). Quite possibly the only guy who could make walking down a hall threatening. Adapted from a Richard Stark novel.
Predators has Royce, a mercenary who nearly causes his comrades to die and recognizes he is not a good person. But he's fast.
In Ravenous (2017), most of the protagonists are this once the film goes into full swing. They are very distrustful, selfish, and bitter. Notably, Bonin and Tania are not anti-heroes, as they form a make-shift family with Zoe.
The title characters in the Rocky and Bullwinkle spin-off movie Boris and Natasha are either this or Anti-Villain. Besides the fact that they were the main villains on the original series, they believe "it's good to be bad" and go off on their evil mission, but after learning that Fearless Leader sent them as patsies, realizing they can only trust themselves, and after finding out the powers of the chip they're after, they agree to help its inventor keep the chip from falling into the wrong hands.
The Rover: Eric leaves a trail of bodies behind him in his search for his stolen car, commits st least one murder and claims to have committed two more. It's only his mundane goal that stops him from being a Villain Protagonist.
In the Saw films, Officer Daniel Rigg is the tragic version. To start, he has a temperamental and focused personality, which stems from such situations, where he acted aggressive, and on some occasions, even turned violent, which brought him into conflict with the Internal Affairs Department. Despite this, Daniel is loyal to both his friends and his department, is extremely dedicated to his work and had a strong sense of justice. However, his wish to save and protect everyone turned into an obsession, which proves to be his undoing.
Scanners uses this trope in the thought-provoking sense, rather than the Loveable Rogue sense. Sure, Cameron Vale is a stone cold badass who can put his enemies into cardiac arrest without lifting a finger, but due to being Blessed with Suck, he's also just generally stone cold. He has no outside interests, no real motivation of his own, and not a whole lot of personality, being described by Kim as "barely even human." During his downtime, he simply sits in his hotel room and waits for the next plot point to happen. So yes, he's a badass, but not the sort of badass you would ever daydream about being. This makes sense, as the character was a downright Villain Protagonist in the original script.
Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in The Searchers. He is an ex-Confederate soldier who hates Indians. His brother's farm is raided by Comanche Indians, who kill him and his son, and rape and kill his brother's wife and eldest daughter. They abduct the youngest daughter Debbie and Ethan goes on obsessive search for that goes on for years. At first he wants to find her alive but after a few years when that she might have already been made the wife of an Indian, he intends to kill her. When he finally finds her, he spares her.
Sideways: Miles and Jack are bitter and unfulfilled middle-aged men desperately clinging on to their past successes and do some pretty unscrupulous things: Miles steals money from his mother and takes advantage of her generosity while Jack cheats on his fiancee and showers Stephanie with empty promises of love (it's very hard to blame Stephanie when she beats Jack up once she finds that that he's getting married soon). But they're both sympathetic characters who have moments of genuine altruism and look out for each other when it counts the most.
The Star Chamber: Judge Hardin, who joins a Vigilante Militia after he's obliged to set murderers free multiple times as a result of legal errors by the state. He only does it when there is clearly no other way they'll be brought to justice. When it turns out that a couple who were accused really didn't commit the murder, he risks his life trying to save them once the group that he's joined refuses to call off the hit against them. At the very end, he's soon working with the police to bust the group, having realized they're also bad.
Han Solo is an Anti-Hero, most vividly seen by comparing him to Luke Skywalker, the obvious hero (which also makes him The Lancer). At the end of the first movie, he has a Big Damn Hero moment. From there, he moves more toward the standard hero as time goes on.
In contrast, Boba Fett, who was depicted as a villain in the movies, is portrayed more as an Anti-Hero in the Expanded Universe. While he's still the badass bounty hunter who won't hesitate to disintegrate you if somebody is willing to pay him for it, Fett does have a very loosely defined code of honor and apparently has a soft spot for orphans and the oppressed, and will often go out of his way to help them. Examples include him giving money to charity and saving an alien species from extinction for a hundred credits (it's even implied that he gave their money back). He's also unwilling to kill Republic clone troopers, since like him, they're all clones of his "father" Jango Fett.
Anakin Skywalker as seen in the second and third Prequel movies is considered by some to be an Anti-Hero. Others see him more as a Tragic Hero.
Cassian Andor from Rogue One is introduced killing an informant who can't escape and admits he has done many other dirty things as a Rebel spy, but he is a firm believer in the Rebel cause and joins Jyn's attempt to steal the Death Star plan because I've Come Too Far.
The Street Fighter — Terry (Takuma) Tsurugi from the Sonny Chiba grindhouse classic is a particularly vicious Anti-Hero. He fights with a savage brutality seldom seen in the action world (including one scene when he castrates a rapist with his bare hands, which earned the movie the industry's first X rating for violence), he doesn't hold back against men or women, and he protects those he counts as friends with his life. On the other hand, Terry isn't above sacrificing innocents who he's not specifically helping, he can be a stone bastard to those he feels has betrayed him, and he's not above sending you out a window and selling your sister into prostitution if you can't afford to pay him for the job he's just done for you.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd starts out as one of these, plotting to avenge his wrongful imprisonment and the rape of his wife upon Dirty Old Man Judge Turpin. Then around the middle of the movie, his bid to kill Judge Turpin goes awry and in the midst of his less than Heroic BSoD, he launches into the dynamite "Epiphany" number which marks his transition from Anti-Hero to full on Villain Protagonist with a nasty grudge against humanity in general, and then starts killing people and having them baked into pies.
Bryan Mills in Taken is a ruthless anti-hero who takes the law into his own hands. His daughter is kidnapped to be sold into slavery, so... he mercilessly tortures and kills dozens of people connected to the kidnapping including unarmed mooks who have surrendered. He is not afraid to Shoot the Dog a few times, either.
Vera's partner Lily in Vera Drake, through whom she gets most of her patients. Vera eventually learns that Lily is charging the women for the abortions and neither telling Vera nor offering her any of the money. (Not that Vera would accept it anyway, but still.)
Frank Galvin of The Verdict is a quite the Ambulance Chaser in the beginning of the film, and after he rediscovers his thirst for justice, he can be rather...scummy in his tactics.
Jet Li's character in The Warlords had good intentions and started out as a good guy but as he grew in power his methods became more and more extreme even if his goals were still for the overall greater good.
Sgt. Howie from the original British version of The Wicker Man (1973). And he's a very interesting example of one, too. He's at first just a responsible policeman investigating the disappearance of a young girl, but as the film goes on, the uglier side of his moral views, along with his Christian beliefs, reveals itself. He changes into a preachy religious bigot and Jerkass who hates the islanders for being pagans. Murderous, perverted, two-faced pagans who end up killing him, so his view is somewhat justified.
