10 Movies That Weren’t Brave Enough To Kill The Main Character

2. Bud White - LA Confidential

One of the best crime films of the last twenty years (perhaps ever), LA Confidential won a ton of awards when it was released back in 1997. Not only that, but it also served to launch the Hollywood career of one Russell Ira Crowe. And Crowe himself should've won some sort of award for 'Most Ridiculous Survival Of Multiple Gunshot Wounds Ever'. In the climax to the film's twisty plotline, loose cannon Bud White (Crow) and goodie-goodie Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) find themselves fighting for their lives in a shootout with a squad of hitmen led by corrupt cop James "That'll do, pig" Cromwell.

Crowe catches several bullets, one of which hits him in the face. Convinced that this must be the end of their violent-yet-endearing anti-hero, audiences are then surprised to see a bandaged-up Bud sitting in the back of Kim Basinger's car with his jaw wired shut during the film's epilogue. It's not so much that Bud White survives that is the problem - after all, he survives a similar shootout in the film's source novel by James Ellroy - it's more that his survival is so illogical. He gets shot up so many times that it's a hard pill to swallow.

It would have been a more believable scenario to have Crowe shot that many times and die rather than miraculously survive by the skin of his teeth (which he can no longer use, ironically). Had Warner Bros been a little braver, they could've logically had him die and audiences would have been okay with it. As far as loyalist book readers were concerned, the film changed so much of the original novel as to be unrecognisable anyway - so going one step further and killing Bud wouldn't have added any more fuel to their fire.