I was watching a film on TV last night (The Jackal with Bruce Willis) and ended up rooting for the villain, but of course he got his comeuppance in the end. And this got me thinking, what films are there where the bad guys win? The ones I came up with are:

Arlington Road - This is a v.cool film, by the way. Although I have just spoiled it for you all.

Empire Strikes Back - Not sure if this counts, since it's really part two of a trilogy.

Seven - Sort of, I suppose.

Usual Suspects - Spacey gets his way again.

Fight Club - He DOES blow up all the buildings, so I guess it's a victory of a sort.

Can anyone think of any more?

Fallen with Denzel Washington is the only one that springs to mind. Oh, and Home Alone. Well, he was a villain to me, anyway.

Titan A.E.-At the very beginnning of the movie these alien guys blow up the earth, but then they day at the end. It's a win-win scenario.

---
:\

Ravenous

Blair Witch Project 1 & 2

Any horror flick with Jason, Freddy, or Michael (since they always came back)

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil

---
Women are fisher's of men because we all know.... The small ones you throw back. The medium ones you eat. The large ones you mount.

"The Real Mcoy" was a good film where the baddies win hehehe

Swordfish - John Travolta gets away with it.

Pulp Fiction - They're all bad guys, so I guess it's true.

Reservoir Dogs - I like to believe Mr Pink escaped with the diamonds, there is no proof he was caught.

Dr Strangelove - Everybody dies, so, technically it wasn't a "good" ending.

Braveheart - In the long run, I don't believe that we won anything.

---
Dad was flammable

i swear you hear mr pink lose the gunfight against the cops

---
Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of men? MIKE BOBSICO KNOWS! And if you give him a decent tip when he delivers your mail , he might tell you.

Regarding Reservoir Dogs, a title card mentioned in the screenplay was not included in the finished film. It was to be superimposed over the famous opening credits slo'mo walk, and said something like, "One of these men is a cop. When this story is done, only one of these men will be alive." Soething like that. If you listen very carefully at the end of the film, you can distantly hear Pink being ordered to drop his gun - no gunshots follow, so we assume he did.

All of these are bigger spoilers than you will find on the back of a Ferarri F40, but anyway...

Almost every eighties slasher film has a dark twist in the end, indicating that either the killer is not dead, or they got the wrong guy. A few that spring to mind are Superstition, Black Christmas (not actually 80s - 1974, I think, and a true horror masterpiece), Halloween (again, not quite 80s, and also a classic), and pretty much anything by Lucio Fulci.

Apart from that undeniably cheesy period and genre, which I never the less love dearly, I can think of a couple of films which end badly for the heroes... 12 Monkeys, Chinatown, Unbreakable (the "bad guys" don't win, as such, but damn...), and Polanski's version of Macbeth.

---
This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

Dammit, I forgot 12 Monkeys. And here's me being a big Brad Pitt fan.

Mary Poppins

---
"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Was Bruce Willis a baddie in Pulp Fiction? I wouldn't say so. John Travolta was badder, and he died.

I'm sure you can hear gunshots at the end and Pink saying something about being shot. Whether he dies, of course, is still uncertain.

In Dr Strangelove, not everybody dies. Some of them hide in a bunker.

Braveheart? The baddies lose at the end of the film, at Bannockburn.

Swordfish is the worst film ever. But yeah, the baddies win.

you definitely hear gun shots and shouting, but there is nothing to say that he got caught, the fact that he outran the cops earlier in the film leads me to believe that he probably got away, at least, that's what I like to think.

---
Dad was flammable

I despised "Arlington Road." I can't stand it when a script requires highly improbable perfect omniscience on the part of the bad guy to set up the good guy. Tim Robbins' character had to know exactly how Jeff Bridges' character would respond in every scene, and he also had to know that Jeff Bridges' character would not accidentally run into another car on the way to the federal building (or wherever it was that done got blowed up real good). It's a sham and a cheat, I tell ya. The best example of this kind of movie is "Body Double." I have hated DePalma ever since he made that flick...

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

I must defend Arlington Road. If you hate any films featuring omniscient bad guys, you're condemning a goodly number of films. Silence of the Lambs, for example (and that's another where the baddie wins, in a way).

In Brazil, it's hard to say whether the baddies won or our hero escaped, if only in his mind. I think it's the latter, judging from Palin's last line, to the effect that torture couldn't reach him anymore. American audiences did not respond well to this sort of victory. Their idea of victory would have been Palin getting impaled on a steam pipe and hurled into an active volcano.

---
What others say about boorite!

Please pardon my pronoun-antecedent screwup in the last post.

I almost forgot Crimes and Misdemeanors. Talk about a movie where the bad guy wins.

---
What others say about boorite!

Sorry. It's unpardonable.

La Haine is a fantastic black and white French film that was made a couple of years ago, you don't really know how it ends, it's a bit Clichéd but it's still a very cool film.

The Green Mile.....I have no idea if that's a good ending or not, I mean, Tom Hanks and the mouse get punished for letting John Coffey die...or something, fuck knows, but it's certainly not a happy ending, bad guy - God.

Titanic, bad guy - the iceberg.

Perfect Storm, I haven't seen it because it looks shit, but I'm sure they all die, bad guy - the sea!

-------

Dr Strangelove, the guys in the bunkers ARE the baddies, it's all the innocent people in the world who died (although, technically, everyone's a sinner, but, fuck that, this isn't a moral debate).

Pulp Fiction, sure, Bruce Willis was a goodie, and Travolta died, but there was still a lot of other baddies who never got their come-uppance Hollywood style.

Braveheart, come on Andy, surely you don't think that we've won the kind of freedom that was promised by that nice Australian man?

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

---
Dad was flammable

Wee babies aren't.

They still didn't exactly win. Just because they don't end up suffering in some way doesn't mean they've won.

That's as maybe, but at the end of the film, the baddies lose. No question about it.
I take it you're an SNP voter, then?

I love to wear the Sash my father wore.

Sorry. It's unpardonable.

---

This from the man who wrote, "Filled with wanton violence and cheap sex, I hated this film."

---
What others say about boorite!

vote?

---
Dad was flammable

I meant exactly what I said.

Who will emerge victorious in this film I cannot say, but there are two fucking PanaVision trucks, a Ryder Rental tech truck and a generator all parked across from my side door shooting film for it at the skating rink across the street.

I can just squeak out of my driveway. Naturally -due to IATSE infighting and backstabbing- our company wont get a scrap of this shoot, and so I get to watch some chick in jeans with a Cinematic Loupe lens block my driveway and drink latte`.

Crikey.

---
I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

just reading this, Spankling posted "Mary Poppins".

What is the deal with Mary Poppins? Is it ever explained in a book or anything? I mean, is she an alien? a witch? a fairy? does she have any parents? Obviously she has a history with Bert the benefit fraud, maybe they met at school, maybe he knocked her up, who knows?

these things should be explained.

---
Dad was flammable

quote:

---

just reading this, Spankling posted "Mary Poppins".

What is the deal with Mary Poppins? Is it ever explained in a book or anything? I mean, is she an alien? a witch? a fairy? does she have any parents? Obviously she has a history with Bert the benefit fraud, maybe they met at school, maybe he knocked her up, who knows?

these things should be explained.

---

You're catching on! People think Harry P. is about the occult but they never raised an eyebrow at this demoness in a tight boddess. She transports those kids to an imaginary 2-dimensional world for krist's sake!

---
"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet