20 Movie Characters Who Never Got The Comeuppance They Deserved

Sure, Briony did feel great regret for her terrible actions as a child, but be honest, does that actually change anything? 

In the opening scenes of Atonement, young Briony (played, as a child, by Saoirse Ronan) becomes jealous of her older sister Celia (Keira Knightley), who has a romance with Robbie (James McAvoy), the gardener at their family's lavish country estate. She's angry because she has a crush on Robbie, and when her cousin (Juno Temple) is assaulted on the estate, Briony spitefully implicates Robbie. 

Thanks to this false accusation, Robbie is imprisoned, then sent off to war, and he ultimately dies of septicaemia during the evacuation of Dunkirk, while Celia dies in the bombing of Balham Tube Station. As for the real attacker, Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch), he ends up marrying his own victim so that she can never testify, and he ultimately gets away with everything. 

In the end, an elderly Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) reveals that her final novel rewrites the story with a happy ending, imagining Robbie and Celia having a life together as they should've done. Again, Briony is deeply remorseful, but the bottom line is that she got to live a long life as a successful author. Meanwhile, she got Robbie killed, she destroyed the life of her sister, and allowed a sick predator to get away with everything and further torment her cousin. Why? All because of her childish jealousy.