Action movies usually end on an upbeat note, with the heroes triumphing over the villains and riding off into the sunset, but that’s not always the case. A lot of this year’s action films have ended on a down note. The Batman ended with Gotham City being flooded, Thor: Love and Thunder ended with Jane Foster losing her battle with cancer, and Michael Bay’s Ambulance ended with one of the bank robbers reluctantly killing his brother to save a paramedic.
From the death of James Bond in No Time to Die to the harrowing climactic twist in Oldboy, Redditors have enjoyed these subversively sad endings of action movies.
10 No Time To Die (2021)
Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie, No Time to Die, was full of surprises. 007 relinquished his codename to a new agent, fathered a child, killed Blofeld, and ultimately gave his life to save the world. Bond always manages to escape certain death, but at the end of No Time to Die, he was trapped on an island as it was decimated by nukes.
According to Redditor u/Midnightchickover, this is one of the best downer endings of an action movie. It certainly subverted the audience’s expectations of a Bond film and brought Craig’s tenure as 007 to a definitive close.
9 Rogue One (2016)
Hollywood rarely misses an opportunity for franchise expansion. When Lucasfilm filled in the backstory of the Rebels’ theft of the Death Star plans in Rogue One, it seemed to set up a whole Star Wars sub-franchise starring this new cast of characters. But then they all died.
Redditor u/Fantastic_Poet4800 described the ending – in which all these lovable new characters are killed off in one fell swoop – as “a hugely unexpected downer of an ending.”
8 First Blood (1982)
The Rambo sequels could never top the original movie, First Blood, an incisive critique of the treatment of Vietnam War veterans. John Rambo is a soldier who returns home with PTSD, finds that all his old war buddies have passed away, and gets harassed by some crooked small-town cops.
Redditor u/Midnightchickover found the movie’s downer ending to be effective. It’s certainly a realistic ending. Rambo isn’t saved by some deus ex machina; he just gives up and allows himself to be arrested.
7 End Of Watch (2012)
David Ayer brought the “found footage” style of horror to the police thriller genre with his underappreciated action-packed gem End of Watch. The movie revolves around two cops who film their latest investigation and end up in an intense firefight with gangsters.
Redditor u/No_Desk_5636 felt that the movie’s found-footage shooting style – paired with its tragic ending – brought a subversive sense of realism to the genre.
6 Léon: The Professional (1994)
A combination of visceral assassin thriller and heartfelt father-daughter story, Léon: The Professional revolves around a contract killer taking an orphan under his wing and training her in the art of killing so she can take revenge against the corrupt DEA agent who slaughtered her family.
Léon is one of the most sympathetic hitmen in movie history, so Redditor u/Hobs1998 was heartbroken to see him killed in the movie’s explosive finale.
5 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
While No Time to Die was the first Bond movie to kill off 007, it wasn’t the first one with a heartbreaking ending. At the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond marries the love of his life and after the wedding, when they’re on their way to marital bliss, his bride is gunned down in a drive-by shooting.
According to Redditor u/Midnightchickover, this is a great downer ending. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service sets up a happy ending with the wedding, then immediately takes a dark turn before the closing credits.
4 Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Marvel delivered the most iconic downer ending in a blockbuster movie since The Empire Strikes Back with “The Snap” at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos spent the whole movie prattling on about his insane plan to fix the universe by killing half of its population. Then, in the final reel, he actually did it.
Redditor u/plinkett-wisdom was stunned by this ending. The Avengers managed to rectify this universal genocide in the next movie, but Infinity War still shocks on every rewatch.
3 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut Reservoir Dogs is a “heist gone wrong” movie that doesn’t depict the heist on-screen. The robbers spend the movie trying to figure out which one of them is an undercover cop, and they all end up shooting each other in a tense climactic standoff.
In the final shot, the movie’s surrogate father-son dynamic reaches a heartbreaking conclusion as Mr. Orange comes clean and Mr. White kills him before being shot by the swarming police. Redditor u/moinatx was stunned by the tension of this ending.
2 Oldboy (2003)
Redditor u/R3DM0NK3Y_ was devastated by the ending of the brutal revenge thriller Oldboy. It starts out as the story of a wrongfully imprisoned man seeking vengeance, but it ends up being the story of a man who accidentally falls in love with his own daughter.
The final twist in Oldboy is almost as hard-hitting as its iconic hammer hallway massacre. This is a movie that audiences don’t forget about easily.
1 Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
William Goldman’s masterfully crafted script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid upended every trope of the western genre. The titular duo are bank robbers who flee the country at the first sign of danger. Their deaths aren’t depicted on-screen, but they’re left with no other possible outcome.
Redditor u/Palmervarian was moved by the deaths of Butch and Sundance. They remain optimistic in the face of certain doom, saying they should flee to Australia next before being shot dead by the Bolivian army.