10 Movie Villains Who Totally Got Away With It

Roman Polanski's all-timer film noir boasts one of the most uncompromisingly bleak endings that cinema has ever seen.

Throughout the film, P.I. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) finds himself investigating the murder of water engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), which leads him to wealthy businessman Noah Cross (John Huston).

It's eventually revealed that Cross was the mastermind of a scheme to manipulate water resources in order to crash land value and then re-sell the land for a huge profit once it's been irrigated.

It gets much worse, though, as it's also revealed that Cross raped his own daughter, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), making Evelyn's daughter Katherine (Belinda Palmer) both Cross' daughter and granddaughter.

But there's no comeuppance whatsoever for Cross, who foils Jake's plan to get Evelyn and Katherine to Mexico. In a confrontation, Evelyn shoots her father and drives away with Katherine, resulting in the police shooting Evelyn as she flees, killing her.

Katherine is then left in the custody of a wounded but very much alive Cross, with the very clear implication that she's in for a world of abuse. And to place a nihilistic capper on it all, an infuriated Jake is just told to let it go ("Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown").

Cross gets away with it, and as is so true in life, the wheels of capitalism keep on turning while innocent people suffer.