I haven’t seen the SE or DC yet. I think if he was more of a dick from the get-go then I’d like the character more, ironically. Not because I like mean characters, but that would at least give me something to work with. The main reason I was uncomfortable with him abandoning the family and showing absolutely no remorse whatsoever wasn’t because it happened––I’ve seen a lot of movies where dickish characters do bad things to other people and they are still acceptable as a character––it was that the film seemed to expect me as a viewer to not find that totally off-putting and an indictment on his character. It’s even kind of implied that the wife is to blame rather than him, and then she’s totally gone from the film afterward. If there had been some tangible consequence then I could’ve lived with it. For example, in Rudy you can tell that he feels genuine sorrow for needing (at least in his mind) to walk away from his lover to pursue his football dreams. Beyond that, I also found the lead rather uninteresting. I think that Melinda Dillon would’ve been much more relatable as a struggling loner, at least to me, than the heartless electrician that has no interesting qualities. Just my take on it. Other than him, I thought the film was beautiful, but it’s really hard to get past what you consider to be a bad protagonist.