Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity is a movie about a woman, Phyllis Dietrichson, who convinces an insurance salesman, Walter Neff, to give her husband accident insurance and then murder him so that she could collect the money and then Phyllis and Walter could be together. In the end, Walter kills Phyllis and then Walter admits to all that he has done. Could there possibly be any heroes in this movie?

There are two heroes in the movie Double Indemnity depending on whose perspective is considered. In the first perspective, that of Mr. Dietrichson, the hero is Barton Keyes, the expert claims investigator, and Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson are the villains. Walter and Phyllis secretly designed and carried out a plan to kill Mr. Dietrichson and make it look like an accident. They did this to get together and to gain money. Barton Keyes did not accept the official police report that Mr. Dietrichson accidentally died. He continued to investigate, and he found out the truth, that Mr. Dietrichson was murdered. This means that Mr. Keyes would be the hero to Mr. Dietrichson because he got justice for Mr. Dietrichson. Mr. Keyes would also be the hero to the justice system itself, considering that he kept pushing the case until Walter felt so pressured that he admitted to doing the crime. In the end, the correct person was caught and justice was served.

The second hero of the movie, from the perspective of Phyllis Dietrichson, is Walter Neff. Phyllis feels trapped in her marriage. She says her husband is mean, yells, and is even abusive when he is drunk. She says “he keeps me on a leash so tight I can hardly breathe,” and that he will not give her a divorce. For this reason, to Phyllis, Walter would be her hero because he saved her from her husband by killing him. Of course, she is ultimately betrayed by Walter because he kills her at the end, but then it could be argued that since they were both about to be caught, by killing her, Walter saved her from going through the humiliation of being exposed as the horrible person she really was.