The Proposition/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain
• Complete Monster: Eden Fletcher. The rich man of the town, he is a sadistic Knight Templar who orders a retarded fourteen-year old to be flogged to death. He casually orders the massacre of entire aborigine villages. Picture Gene Hackman's character in Unforgiven, and then take away everything that makes him sympathetic, and give him a really annoying Oxford English accent. His actor, David Wenham, comments that in his own way, Fletcher is just as cruel as Arthur under a veneer of high class.
  • And if we take the operative phrase in the previous sentence to be "just as cruel", Arthur qualifies. Without a shred of doubt, he crossed the Moral Event Horizon with the Hopkins massacre. His "kindness" to his brothers doesn't excuse him either - he routinely endangered and corrupted them by bringing them into his criminal lifestyle.
• Sam Stoat is no better. He gleefully participates in all of Arthur's worst crimes including raping Captain Stanley's pregnamt wife.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The entire eerie, dissonant soundtrack
• Moral Event Horizon: Used and subverted. Arthur crossed it when he led the Hopkins Massacre, where the whole family was tortured first. But his youngest brother Mikey is mentally ill and barely aware of the terrible crime.
• Nightmare Fuel: Opening credits: a sweet children's choir singing while we see black-and-white images of the Hopkins Massacre's aftermath. One of these is the baby's cradle drenched in blood.
• Tear Jerker: Mikey's death.