Great Movies Where The Villain Actually Wins

When you watch Brazil, everything is not exactly what it seems. The movie follows a low-level government worker named Sam (Jonathan Pryce) who spends much of his time thinking about a woman who comes to him in dreams. Ultimately, Sam becomes embroiled in a complicated conspiracy after discovering that a bureaucratic error has led to the arrest and death of the wrong man. 

That discovery leads Sam down a path to find the woman he's been seeing in his dreams, who is named Jill (Kim Greist). When he learns that Jill is considered a terrorist accomplice because she attempted to report the wrongful arrest, Sam falsifies records so she can escape. 

After sharing a romantic night together, the two are arrested, and Sam is strapped to a chair where he is about to be tortured. Before the torture can begin, though, a resistance force breaks into the building and rescues Sam and Jill. 

In the movie's final moments, though, we learn that rescue mission was all a delusion of Sam's broken mind. We see that he is still trapped to the chair, and it's heavily implied that he has been lobotomized. His torturers decide he's a lost cause, and leave him alone to sing to himself.

Sam may dream of escaping the bureaucracy that controls every aspect of his life, but in reality, it's a system that's impossible to escape from.