The problem with Harry Lockhart isn't that he's too smart for his own good, or that his luck is just karma on a rampage, or even that he's a ladykiller who turns too many heads. He isn't supremely skilled, he doesn't have a way with words, and he's not a particularly efficient hero, even if he is a genuinely good person most of the time. He's not a world class criminal, he doesn't even have a particularly cool collection of anything.

Harry Lockhart doesn't even always get to be average.

No, instead, he manages to run in slightly-below-average most of the time, neither at the front of the pack nor actually pulling up the rear. Harry's that guy who was in almost every single one of your classes all four years of high school whose name you think is either Henry, Hunter, or maybe Aiden, although he doesn't look much like an Aiden. Maybe Larry?

Anyway. At a glance, Harry does look like a pretty ordinary person. In general, at least. I mean, he steals things for a living – car radios, audio-visual components, watches, gum, whatever knick-knacks will fit in his pockets at the time – which might be a distinguishing feature, but I guess that depends on your demographic area. He's more or less just your average Joe schlepping it through a lower-middle class lifestyle. He looks fairly non-threatening – more and more non-threatening the longer you let him talk, actually, in most cases – doesn't really ask for a whole lot of your attention most of the time, and maybe seems like he took a few extra years to move out of his parents' basement.

No, see, the problem with Harry Lockhart is that despite all of these appearances, he's not ordinary at all.

See: Harry goes out of his way to help people he cares about.

Throughout the film, we mostly just get to see Harry come to care about Perry, his only friend in LA, and that's a one-sided use of the term, and Harmony, the girl of his teenage dreams from back home. Kind of a skewed sample, but. When Harmony's sister is apparently murdered and she comes to ask him for help, he continues on pretending that he's actually a private detective and agrees to help her out. He continues helping her even after she gets pretty damn angry with him and ceases communication, even when this results in him being shot at, beat up, losing a finger (her fault, actually!!!) legitimately tortured, and the only other person involved says that things are too hot and the investigation will wind up getting one of them killed.

I'll admit, for a lot of this Harry is more or less just along for the ride, but he's along with everything he's got, ready to help and be wherever someone tells him he needs to be. He helps Perry on the numerous occasions they're in some form of danger, and listens to the man even while he's occasionally complaining about something having recently gone wrong.

It's one half of his heroic tendencies, what set him apart from the other protagonist characters in the film who are involved due to family and money. These are the traits that he might actually recognise as being somewhat heroic later on, although his sense of self is ridiculously skewed towards the negative. In his eyes, he can't really do much of anything useful, although he has a few tricks he's proud of and doesn't mind flaunting, and figuring out what he's going to count which way is like shooting kool-aid into a wind-tunnel – no usable diagnostic results, lots of mess, and you don't even get to enjoy the kool-aid.

See: Harry also cares for people he knows almost nothing about.

What is basically our introduction to Harry as an adult character is him trying to defend the honor of this girl who has fallen asleep at a party. He doesn't recognize her yet, doesn't know who this other guy even is, but he whips out the tough guy card and sounds pretty god damn convincing about it – up until he's getting his ass handed to him outside. Later, he tells a corpse who is more or less haunting him that "she deserved better, sweetheart" while begrudgingly leaving her body by the side of the road. Perry had previously described this as "dumping the luggage", a bit of crude casualness that cased Harry to give him a somewhat disgusted look, because she's still a person, and deserves respect.

Later still, he's hiding under a bed when someone is shot on top of it and the girl falls to the floor, seeing wow this guy under her bed she didn't know was there. In a moment that you can tell will haunt Harry for the rest of his days, he holds a finger to her lips to keep her from saying anything to alert the gunman who is still in the house that he is there as well, but he refuses to actually break eye contact with the dying girl until she passes. He then immediately avenges her death in a particularly cathartic execution.

Basically the other half of his recognizable heroism, but good luck getting him to notice or even acknowledge that caring and sympathizing with other people is anything other than normal. New York City's taught a lot of the Indiana boy about keeping some things to yourself, but Harry just happens to be a very open person, about most things. It's not always that awesome a trait to have.

See: Harry is a fantastic example of the dogged underdog.

Harry also is straight up not very good at most common things people define as skills. He can't math for shit, nor does he have a particularly firm grasp on English grammar. He doesn't know Denmark from Denver, and sometimes he says fairly insulting things when caught up in the heat of the moment and whatever his mouth is saying this time. However, despite this, he never appears particularly at a loss. For what to do in that moment, sure, sometimes, but he is amazingly adept at giving himself a moment to be upset, and then dragging himself back up to his knees, then his feet, and moving on with the next task. He does this three times throughout the film to varying degrees.

The first is when the police inform him (incorrectly) that Harmony shot herself. Harry has a moment outside by Perry's car where he's remarkably sad about this, and then he picks himself up and goes inside. Later, just after basically executing that one guy, he has another moment in someone's kitchen where the gravity of what he's just done catches up with him. That time, he gets to hug a dog to speed up the process, but he still gathers himself back together and moves on with the narrative. The third and final time is the most dramatic, when after he and Perry have both been shot and are bleeding out on the highway, a phone call from Harmony and a callback to their shared childhood literally has him get back up on his feet and save the day. There are constantly roadblocks in Harry's way – several of them placed there however inadvertently by himself – but he never stops moving regardless.

See: Harry actually can be skilled when he isn't thinking about it.

There are a few things Harry can do. He's obviously got some understanding of electrical equipment, based on needing to know which things to steal, and how to get around various sorts of alarm systems. He's been arrested five times, which insinuates his knowledge isn't exactly extensive, or perhaps that he simply sucks at planning out all the rest of the robberies, &c., but as it is, he wouldn't be able to be making a living at it if he weren't at least knowledgeable.

Similarly, Harry has a pretty awesome amount of hand-eye coordination. This is evident in his ability to steal small items, and within a couple certain bits of sleight-of-hand performed twice in the movie, as well as his ability to shoot and kill like ten people by the end of it – some of whom are in moving cars, or are standing on the overpass he's currently dangling from. He pulls off some spectacular shooting at the end of the film, but all of these things happen basically when he is either not thinking about them, or is otherwise feeling confident. If anyone else nearby is more competent, Harry will immediately defer to them in most cases, lowering even the number of actions he takes. Fairly consistently, he only accomplishes anything of note if he is the one offering the assistance, or no one else he cares about is paying attention.

Honestly, Harry tends to be one of those people that you either almost instantly find annoying, or tolerate in a sort of wayward-puppy kind of way. He doesn't really mess around with social etiquette – not on any conscious, buck-the-system level, but simply because they're something that requires at least a little bit of consideration for what you're about to say versus what you maybe perhaps shouldn't. He can be polite, when he's not thinking about it, and he reverts back to what you know is a result of his mother attempting to foist some midwestern manners on her poor son, with his 'sirs' and 'ma'ams' between his New York City defensiveness. Some people find such innocent honesty as his own to be somewhat nice, others find it fairly offensive; it really depends on their own personalities. He likes the idea of being the Bad Boy, but he generally winds up falling into the Best Friend category instead, and oddly doesn't really have a problem with that. You mix his big city cynicism with a farmhouse optimism, and you get someone who can be annoyingly naïve but not always where or when you'd expect him to be. He's romantic, even if he has less idea of how to actually go about that than he does mental math, and he repeatedly becomes involved in danger that doesn't actually involve him because he's a little hard-headed and doesn't know how not to stick up for people who seem to need it, even if they actually don't. He can be quick thinking but usually doesn't seem to think at all, and pinning down how smart he actually is or isn't would... take a while.

But yeah, normally he's pretty alright.