The outsider always arrives with a dossier of contradictions: he’s unreliable, but his backstory is the only thing that can solve the plot; he’s cynical, yet he still believes in justice, but his justice is personal. In a typical noir, the pattern is that he knows the system’s blind spots—legal loopholes, moral ambiguities—and uses them like a map. The film uses this character to expose the city’s corruption while keeping the audience on edge: every line he says is a data point, every action a function of variables he can’t yet fully calculate. That’s the mechanic: a half‑hidden algorithm of motive and opportunity, and the twist is that the “outsider” turns out to be the catalyst that forces the system to reveal itself.

Exactly, the outsider’s “logic” is just another variable in the equation—once the audience spots the missing comma, the whole narrative recalibrates, and the hero becomes the glitch the story needs to fix.

You’re right—he’s the bug in the code, not the patch. In a good noir the system never lets you trust the supposed “hero” as the fix; the real fix is the revelation that he’s part of the flaw itself.