Another vote for No Country For Old Men. I took a long shower after watching that movie. Ugh.
Witness for the Prosecution, by Agatha Christie. But only in the original short story. Not the later film adaptation, the ending of which was altered.
Dont Look Now where the grieving hero instead of meeting up with his reincarnated child is killed by a psychotic dwarf.(Excellent movie by the way).
Black Easter by James Blish, about Demons coming into the world from Hell and running amok.
The end is very chilling, a monk stammers to Beezulbub, “But the Bible said that the forces of good would triumph”, and Beezulbub smiles and says “Well both sides have their propaganda”.
(Not exact words)
The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds.
Jack Williamson’s With Folded Hands.
Wasn’t there a dead priest somewhere in there too?
[QUOTEThe Charge of the Light Brigade.[/QUOTE]
Doesn’t your definition of “good guys” and “bad guys” in this situation depend on whether you support the British or the Russians?
The same thing could be said about the movie Zulu. If you view the Zulus as an heroic people unsuccessfully resisting the unprovoked invasion of their country by the British, they are the good guys and they lost.
If you stick to the original book, The Name of the Rose has to count.
Sure, William eventually unravels the mystery and Jorge winds up dead. But Jorge was a maniac who was happy to die to achieve his goals and William couldn’t stop him taking the lost book with him. Meanwhile, the library has been destroyed, the girl has been dragged off to torture and death, William’s diplomatic mission has ended in disaster and the Minorites will lose their political struggle with the Pope. The only characters who get off scot free are Bernard Gui and the Avignonese (who admittedly are historical, but still…)
I would like some expansion on this one–who are the bad guys, and what did they “win”? For that matter, could you explain the ending?
The Chocolate War.
Yes, Doctor Who, impaled by a church.
And I just remembered, wasn’t there an episode of Tom and Jerry where the cartoon ends on a beach, with Tom sneaking up behind Jerry and a bird, covering them with an umbrella as he grins horribly.
But we don’t really know that ANY part of that entire story actually happened. The entire movie, except for the interrogation sequences might be fictional even within the confines of the movie.
What we do know, however, is that Keyser Soze gets away.
primal fear
Hmm. I just realized something. In nearly every hollywood movie since Nightmare on Elm street, every horror movie tries to leave the possibility of a sequel by having the bad guy do one last kill or scare. Wouldn’t that count, and make this entire thread somewhat moot?
Sure:
The real significance of the book Depp is searching for is that it details how one becomes the next human incarnation of Satan. The blond that helps Johnny Depp out is in fact the current incarnation of Satan. The last scene shows Depp heading into the ruin, where he will become the next incarnation of Satan, and hence star in Pirates of the Caribbean in the future.
Memento
The whole movie is a play-through of how he masterminds a way to murder a guy who pissed him off, in a way where he won’t know that he had done so.
No.
In All Quiet on the Western Front the hero is a German soldier (Who us Brits were fighting against at the time) and he gets killed at the very end, this is an example of the bad guys winning, in this case the bad guys being us.
As to the poor hard done by Zulus, historically they actually migrated south into the territory that they were occupying killing off, or driving away the local peoples .
They were,as I recall, responsible for the extinction of the Bushmen in that area (though that is something that I read a long time ago, so I’m more then ready to be corrected if wrong in my recollection).
So while the Brits weren’t exactly innocents neither were the Zulus.
Thats how things were in that age, so I wouldn’t get too upset about it.
How about Kind Hearts and Coronets?
Actually the Zulus were moving south and the British north into lands previously occupied by other tribes which the Zulus and the British were conquering. The border between their respective advances had been established at the Buffalo River, a border both sides agreed to honor. The Zulus wanted peace because they knew in the long run they could not defeat the British Empire, but the British wanted to expand into Zulu territory so they seized on a minor incident as an excuse for an invasion. But this is probably telling most viewers of this thread more than they want to know about the Zulus.
Conwsidering that the protagonist had written out a confession of his crimes, and left it where it would be found, probably not.
I disagree. The soldiers discussed who were the good guys, and who were the bad guys in the war. They came to the conclusion that the good guys would be whoever won. This is perhaps the central point of the novel/film.
I don’t know that I’d agree with that. There’s three protagonists to the movie: Travolta, Willis, and Jackson. Travolta and Jackson are both clearly bad guys: they’re paid killers. By the end of the film, Jackson repents of his wickedness and sets out to seek redemption. I don’t think an ending where a bad guy resolves not to do evil anymore counts as “bad guys winning.” Travolta, of course, gets killed, so that’s a loss. Willis is initially presented as somewhat mercenary - he agrees to participate in a rigged fight, for the express purpose of double crossing the fixer - but that’s not evil, just opportunistic, and the only person he’s deliberately hurting is a mob boss (killing the other boxer was an unfortunate accident. However, he also has the only moment of true heroism in the film, when he goes back into the dungeon to rescue the man who wants to kill him. In exchange, he gets to escape with the money and the girl, and a promise from the mob boss that he won’t be hunted down for the double cross. Over all, I’d call that a net win for virtue.