Character Analysis
Babe Ruthless
We think it's fair to say that Doyle Lonnegan is one of the most menacing villains in movie history…and that's saying a lot. After all, movie history includes Chinatown' s Noah Cross, Hannibal Lecter, and the Wicked Witch of the West.
But there's something about Doyle Lonnegan that sets him apart. He's both ice cold (Hannibal Lecter-style) and full of rage (Wicked Witch-style). And what's especially interesting about Lonnegan is the mixture of loyalty and total cold-heartedness he feels toward the rest of the world.
We get a glimpse of this at one point when he tells his bodyguard about another mob boss named Danny:
DOYLE LONNEGAN: Me and Danny been friends since we were six. Take a good look at that face, Floyd, cause if he ever finds out we let one lousy grifter beat us, you'll have to kill him and every other hood in Chicago who'd like to do the same thing.
In other words, Lonnegan knows the importance of friends—after all, he's a middle-aged dude who still hangs out with his kindergarten buddies. But he also wouldn't hesitate for a second to kill everyone he knows in order to protect his criminal empire.
An Interesting Backstory
We learn an awful lot about Lonnegan in the scene where the conmen sit together around a poker table and talk over the guy's weaknesses. At one point, one of the conmen says,
My guess is he's just trying to build himself a respectable image. He came out of Five Points, but he's telling everybody he was born in Forest Hills.
So Lonnegan is a guy who crawled his way out of a poor neighborhood, but he likes to tell people that he comes from money. In other words, he'd like to cover up his working-class past, but it's this very information that Johnny uses to get close to him, since Johnny (posing as a guy named Kelly) tells Lonnegan that he comes out of Five Points.
Lonnegan might have a heart of stone, but he sees some of himself in Johnny Hooker and can't help but root for the kid, especially since they apparently have a common enemy in Henry Gondorff a.k.a. Shaw. Lonnegan hates Henry deeply because he's a proud man and a very sore loser. When he finds out that Henry cheated him at cards, Lonnegan erupts with,
DOYLE LONNEGAN: Who do you think you're talking to? Nobody sets me up!
Oh, Doyle. That's your main problem: you're so sure that "nobody sets [you] up" that you can't pick up on the fact that people…are setting you up.
Formidable Enemy
Despite his pride, though, Lonnegan is not a man of many weaknesses. This is something the grifters figure out rather quickly when one of them says,
I don't know what to do with this guy. He's an Irishman who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and doesn't chase dames. He's a grand knight in the Knights of Columbus.
We get more evidence of Lonnegan's craftiness when he decides to put his best hitman (or hitwoman) on Johnny Hooker, telling his lackey,
DOYLE LONNEGAN: We'll put Salino on it. I need somebody careful.
So even though Henry and Johnny are great conmen, it's clear that they've found themselves a worthy target in Lonnegan. Now the biggest challenge is conning him before Lonnegan's thugs track down and kill Johnny.
By the end of the movie, we know that the only way Henry and Johnny are going to get away with conning Lonnegan is if Lonnegan doesn't know he's been conned. That's why it's so satisfying to see the final scene of this movie, where Lonnegan realizes he's made the wrong bet at the betting parlor and goes into near-hysterics when he shouts,
DOYLE LONNEGAN: There's been a mistake. Give me my money back! I tell you there's been a mistake! Give me my goddamn money back!
Of course the fun doesn't end there. Johnny and Henry both fake their own deaths by getting shot by a fake FBI agent, and they con the clumsy Lt. Snyder into pulling Lonnegan out of the building in order to avoid getting mixed up with the FBI bust.
The whole thing is perfect—but hey: it had to be perfect in order to fool a guy as crafty as Doyle Lonnegan.