In The Maltese Falcon , Sam Spade and his partner, Spade and his client, Spade and the band of criminals seeking the falcon, all play out an iterated game. Cary Grant showing up in the wheatfield in North by Northwest is an act of cooperation. Everyone he has tried to protect is dead, he is mortally wounded, and the movie ends with his unpiloted boat eternally circling the risen monster. Scores of movies, from Hitchcock's Saboteur to this year's Johnny Mnemonic , have a scene where the hero and villain fight on a roof, hang from a bridge, the Statue of Liberty, etc. The villain at some point is hanging off the roof, or both are.
Dark dramas are most often about the prisoner's dilemma.