Start the same, end differently

Mark Whalberg starred in a movie a couple of years ago called Shooter. He played a military trained sniper who gets set up for the attempted assassination of the president. The movie was pretty entertaining, with plenty of suspense and intrigue and action. I was right with the story up until the end. The last ten or fifteen minutes made me sit back and go "Really? That's how you decided to end the story?" The ending did not fit the rest of the movie. It was almost as though the writer got bored and just ended the movie so he could go for nachos. It left me dissatisfied.
I think that the ending is the hardest part of any story and is often the reason that a movie or book falls flat, especially with suspense or horror. Throughout the story everything is being set up and if the movie is good (up to that point) then the solution must be equally clever, and often it is not. Sometimes I think the story just became so convoluted and complex that there was no solution that would be satisfying. Other times I think the writer just gives up. In the case of Shooter I tend to think it is the latter - there had to have been a better way to end the movie that tied up all of the loose ends and meted out the proper justice for those involved. It's not even that the ending is bad; I enjoyed the idea of the ending. It is more that the ending was on the wrong movie. For the ending they filmed to have worked they would have needed to have told the story differently. It did not mesh with the rest of the film.
But in the end, is love not all we have left?