What Are Some Good Movies Where The GOOD GUY Fails?*

[knight steel]

No one has mentioned Gallipoli yet. This saddens me.

Spoiler: Kinda the ending scene, ye be warned

One of the best Australian movies ever made,makes me tear up every time

 

[Poetic Nova]

As a few have mentioned before me: 1984, one of my personal favorite movies.
Saw series may count but I personally only recommend watching the first one.

Edit: I could be wrong but some short films from the Animatrix may count 2.

 

[nerd51075]

Since 1984 has already been mentioned several times, I'll go with The Great Gatsby.

 

[grey_space]

Best of the Best.

Martial arts movie in which the all star American team underdog loses to the 'evil bad guy' Koreans.

Awesome

 

[Scarim Coral]

The only three I can think of are-
Ju-on: The Grudge (The Japanese version as I don't know if the US remaked ended the same way)
Kingpin (Ok granted it was still a happy ending but not the way most of us was going to expect for him to win the tournament.)
The Departed

 

[Kennetic]

No Country For Old Men comes to mind for me. It's also based on a book but the movie was epic

 

[Rylot]

A lot of horror films end badly for the protagonists; some recent ones:

Last Exorcism

most of the Paranormal Activities

Insidious

Cabin in the Woods (sort of?)

Woman in Black (Some what of a silver lining but still)

Sinister

 

[Frezzato]

I think there are plenty of "mainstream" movies where the good guys don't exactly get away clean. Almost all of mine are horror though. I love horror movies, except I wasn't too crazy about Cabin in the Woods.

30 Days of Night
The Road
The Descent
The Cabin in the Woods
John Carpenter's The Thing
Insomnia

The Mist.

But I'd like an example of an epic story/adventure and then the bad guys win.

Hell yeah, The Mist. Bad CGI but the plot is almost entirely faithful to the original short story, which I loved.

-edit-
Boys Don't Cry
The Last Seduction (woooooo! Featuring a young, hot Linda Fiorentino)

 

[Doogan]

I am shocked to see that no one has mentioned the Denzel Washington film "Fallen"

If you have not seen it then shame on you!

 

[Padwolf]

OP, please, go and watch a film called Memories of Matsuko. Please! I keep telling people to watch it. It's a bit of a downer but trust me, it's such a wonderful film.

 

[Mr.Cynic88]

Falling Down

Memento

Rocky

I'm using the term "good guy" for Falling Down and Memento broadly, but these are three great classic movies with non-traditional endings.

 

[soren7550]

The first one that comes to mind is Black Hawk Down, but I'm not so sure if it counts for you.

Spoiler

The film ends with the 75th Ranger Regiment and 1st SFOD-D running out of the city and into their safe zone several miles out with 18 dead and many more wounded, and one of their pilots captured. Several of them go back into the city in order to get back their missing, and the film ends showing their dead being loaded onto a plane in flag draped coffins. They didn't get the bad guys they wanted, and the battle resulted in the US pulling out of Somalia, leaving the warlord still in power.

The reason I'm not sure if it really counts because the movie dose say that they got their pilot back, and that a few years later the warlord did die, but still.

Either way, go see Black Hawk Down. It's a very excellent movie.

 

[Frezzato]

I am shocked to see that no one has mentioned the Denzel Washington film "Fallen"

If you have not seen it then shame on you!

I swear I first read the short story it was based on in an issue of Playboy. No, seriously, I read an article in Playboy.

 

[Fifty-One]

I am shocked to see that no one has mentioned the Denzel Washington film "Fallen"

If you have not seen it then shame on you!

Time is on my side.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog

that's a really good one. Mostly because all the other movies (That haven't been mentioned already) don't really have characters that can divided into "good guys" and "bad guys"

I can think of a ton of movies where the protagonist is "bad" but there is no "good guy" who fails.

 

[BeeGeenie]

"When the Wind Blows" (1986)
A tragic, animated tale of a little old married couple naively preparing for a nuclear emergency; and after the bombs drop, slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning.

 

[Phuctifyno]

Alien. Poor thing just wants to eat Sigourney Weaver, gets blown out the airlock.

 

[Twitchy Wyche]

Considering the fact that they made so many more after each movie; the old Universal and Hammer Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolfman series' always technically had the good guys fail. That's the problem with the dead; they have trouble stayin' that way.

 

[Phuctifyno]

But for real, I submit Oldboy for your consideration.

 

[debtcollector]

Cloud Atlas is A) one of the absolute best movies I've seen in recent years and B) divided into around 6 different stories and one of them ends with the destruction of the good guys and the public execution of their leader.