This OP was inspired by The Devil Wears Prada, which I saw last night.
I won’t spoil any of that movie, but let me make up a generic plot that’s not unsimilar: A nice girl is failing in life, but has good friends, a nice lover, and leads a good and honest life. Wanting more success, she sells out. She sucks up to a materialistic and opportunistic mentor, and soon takes on those qualities herself. She becomes a mean bitch, and screws over her friends. In doing this, she becomes extremely successful.
This is often the plot of light comedies. The question is: Can the movie end this way, or must there be a “redemption moment”, when the protagonist realizes the error of her ways and returns to her old life (possibly better off in wisdom) at the expense of success? Is a redemption moment necessary?
As an example, in Rock Star, that movie would have felt really cheap had Chris gone on to great success upon losing his friends and girlfriend. His fall from grace back into mediocrity gave the movie heart. That was his “redemption moment.”
Is it possible for a movie to not have a redemption? Let’s exclude revenge movies, as they are a seperate breed. Screwball comedies as well. And any movie where the protagonist never climbs the corporate/social/fame ladder by stepping on the backs of others.
The only example I can think of is A Shock to the System, and even that can be interpreted as a revenge story.
IIRC Wahlberg’s character is the only main character left standing at the end, and everyone had pretty much fulfilled their good guy/bad guy roles. Nobody went to the dark side then came back.
The Talented Mr. Ripley (and the Ripley stories in general) features a character who lies, steals and kills his way to wealth and social status without ever suffering any consequences or any redemptive moments.
American Psycho is about a yuppie serial killer who never gets caught but I think my first example is closer to what the OP is asking for.
I haven’t seen most of these, but that’s a good example. I guess the tone of the movie sort of sets up the ending. The difference between a light comedy and a dark one, in this case, has to do with more than the lighting.
Everybody Loves Sunshine. Two Manchester, England, gangsters get out of prison. Their old gang welcomes them back, but one of them wants to go straight, the other is eager to gangster again. The one who wants to go straight gets involved with a day care center set up by a gay dance troupe and strikes up a relationship with its attractive (straight, female) owner.
What he doesn’t know is that his ex-partner is a deeply closeted gay (i.e., from himself as well as others) and is in love with him. When gay guy finds out about this romance with an actual woman, he gets together a few of his gangster crew, and they kidnap the day care owner, gang rape her and beat the living hell out of her. They spend some time dragging her around looking half dead, then have another member of the gang strangle her to death and toss her body in a furnace. Then they kill a lot of other gangsters, and the two of them have to go on the lam together, which makes the gay gangster very happy. But while they’re in the airport waiting to cheese it, the guy who did the strangling calls the good gangster and tells him he thinks the closeted gay gangster is nuts, and tells him about having to kill the girlfriend.
The End.
No redemption I could see. Nobody learned anything. No hugging. Plus it was a badly made movie. I don’t know if it was meant to be a movie without redemption or if it was just so stupid that they left out the redemption by accident. It was a very bad movie in just about any respect.
I realize that Daredevil was SUPPOSED to have a redemption story behind it, but “I won’t kill people, I’ll just permanently cripple them” doesn’t seem like a great moral leap to me…
The pedophile gets the young girl and watches his twisted, broken daughter die, thereby getting away with it in the full view of the police. Doesn’t get much less non-redemptive than that.
At least in Payback the Mel Gibson character was done wrong by his gangster buddies and had ample reason to want to pay them back (hence the title.) The day care center owner’s crime was falling in love. For this she gets gang-raped, beaten repeatedly then strangled to death. It’s not the same thing.
In Crimes and Misdemeanors features a married man who gets rid of his mistress through his mob connected brother and not only gets away with it, he eventually gets over it, too.