10 Movie Characters Who Died In The Final Shot
3. The Lieutenant - Bad Lieutenant
Abel Ferrara's mesmerising neo-noir Bad Lieutenant doesn't offer up a remotely surprising fate for its unnamed protagonist, played with gutsy panache by the great Harvey Keitel.
After spending basically the entire movie being the worst cop the world has ever seen, the lieutenant finds a bizarre brand of redemption by not killing or bringing two rapists to justice.
As their victim has forgiven them, he decides to put them on a bus with a ton of money while instructing them to never come back to New York. The lieutenant then returns to his car, where after a moment he's shot and killed by a driving passer-by.
In a brilliantly eerie final choice, Ferrera keeps a locked-off camera pointed at the car from afar for another minute, lingering on the New Yorkers walking past the lieutenant's corpse and quickly going on with their lives.
For all the many bad things he did throughout the movie, you can't say the lieutenant's brutal demise was a shock, even if it tragically came just when he finally found some inner peace.