10 Bleak Movies With Unexpectedly Happy Endings

If you want to take a walk through utter nihilism and contempt for American law enforcement, then you watch the Bad Lieutenant movies, particularly the second one, Port Of Call New Orleans. This Werner Herzog piece details officer Terrance McDonagh - one of the most hateful presences to eve wear a badge on film, as he tries to solve a crime in post-Katrina New Orleans, all while partaking in about a dozen crimes himself at the same time, trying not to get caught.

Any other film given this setup would've made sure that Terrance gets caught by the end and/or dies a horrible death for his sins. But Herzog went a more interesting route.

At the end of the film, he and his partner have the main villain arrested, but unsure if he's actually going to be put behind bars or not. As such, Val Kilmer's character pulls a gun on the drug dealer and tries to shoot him. Now, Terrance has been put through hell by this drug dealer since the beginning of the film, so we have no reason to think he'll save him, and yet he does. Proving that Terrance, for all his many faults, still believes in the system.

This, combined with the last scene of the film, where Terrance meets up with a guy whose life he saved, who then offers to help Terrance get clean, may turn people off from the movie. But since none of it excuses what Terrance had done through the rest of the movie, it's not as bad as it could have been.