Crimemovies often explore the darkest corners of the human psyche. But for most of them, irrespective of how dark and depraved a criminal is, there’s a sense of comfort a viewer can take in knowing that, by the nature of the genre, they’ll be apprehended. Or at least, that used to be the norm back in the days of the Hays Code, when it was necessary to make villains lose. While they were rare, films made in the post-Code era began toying with the idea of villainous triumph, and today, there arebeloved movies where the villain actually wins.
However, it’s still comparatively a rare occurrence, and especially crime movies, even some of the greatestgangster movies that defined the genre, tell stories of triumphs for the justice system. From films with sympathetic villains tomovies where the villain is the best character, and even superhero movies where villains win, likable and triumphant villains are on the rise in today’s scene. So, crime movie villains often get away with their crimes or aren’t punished as much as they deserve to be.
Body Heat
Cast
Body Heat is a 1981 neo-noir thriller directed by Lawrence Kasdan, featuring William Hurt as a small-time lawyer who becomes entangled in a steamy affair with a wealthy man’s wife, played by Kathleen Turner. As their passion intensifies, they plot to murder her husband. The film explores themes of lust, deceit, and moral ambiguity, marked by its sultry atmosphere and intricate storytelling.
When Billy Wilder madeDouble Indemnityin 1944, the Hays Code was being implemented in full effect. So, while he made the moral villains the protagonists of his movie, he had to depict them being punished for their crimes. However, when Lawrence Kasdan started working onBody Heat, he no longer had to work with this restriction. So,not only is Kathleen Turner’s Mary Ann Simpson the femme fatale protagonist, she wins at the end.
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Kasdan, who also wroteThe Empire Strikes Back, one ofthe sci-fi movies where the villains win, wrote one of the best female antagonists in Matty Walker, Ann’s alias. She is seductive, intelligent, and cunning, creating a twisted plot to successfully murder her husband with the help of her lover.Body Heatis an intense crime thriller where Simpson comes very close to being caught multiple times, but she eventually gets away scot-free with all the money she can ask for and a luxurious future to look forward to.
Basic Instinct
Catherine Tramell is an extremely seductive writer and the main suspect in a murder case. Police officer Nick Curran is tasked with solving the crime, but becomes strongly attracted to Catherine, putting his own life at risk.
Verhoeven, known for his sleazy crime thrillers, directed Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, her most famous character inBasic Instinct,his most famous movie. Catherine is the epitome of the femme fatale, a capable seductress who commits cold-blooded murders and then cockily writes about them in her novels to mock the police force. One ofSharon Stone’s best movies, it follows Catherine as she takes the detectives for a ride during their investigation.
Catherine Tramell successfully continues her journey as a murderer in the sequel,Basic Instinct 2(2006), directed by Michael Caton-Jones, but she uses another man for the crimes and, once again, escapes scot-free.
She specifically has her eyes on the head detective, Nick Curran, played by Michael Douglas, who has come close to figuring out the truth. The sexual tension between them, largely to the credit of Stone’s sensuality and prowess as an actress, drives the narrative forward, as the two characters plunge downwards like a meteor into a downward spiral. It’s suggested thatshe eventually kills him after having sex with him, so she successfully escapes arrest and wins as the villain.
Chinatown
Chinatown is a 1974 neo-noir film featuring Jack Nicholson as private investigator Jake Gittes. Tasked with investigating an alleged extramarital affair in pre-World War II Southern California, Gittes is drawn into a complex web of duplicity, unraveling a series of intertwined personal and political scandals.
Polanski, perhaps subconsciously through a reflection on his life, often makes his villains win in his movies. So, it’s not a surprise that the noir film he made also allowed the criminal to triumph over justice. Not only does he win, the audience is offered a rather smug statement of inevitability regarding it inthe ending ofChinatown. When the private investigator can’t keep his love interest, his partner says, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” It’s hard not to read that as smug on a meta-level, given the director’s past.
[Chinatown] earned Robert Towne an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1975.
While the line is particularly bitter coming from a Roman Polanski film, it reflects on the quality of writing in the neo-noir film, which earned Robert Towne an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1975. The despicable villain, played with spine-chilling commitment by John Huston, representsthe underbelly of criminal America and the illusion of fairnessin a world wrought with corruption. The man’s greed and hubris go unpunished as even his own daughter becomes a victim to his insatiable lust for power and control.
No Country for Old Men
No Country for Old Men is a western crime-thriller based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy and directed by the Cohen Brothers. Following three protagonists, the film centers around a large $2,000,000+ cache of dirty money lost near the Rio Grande. With a veteran who finds it, a hitman who will stop at nothing to get it, and a sheriff trying to investigate the crimes connected to it, all roads lead to death and mayhem as they find themselves in each other’s crosshairs.
One of theaction movies where the villain wins, the Coen brothers’No Country for Old Men, features one of the best villains in recent years. It follows three main characters – a hitman, Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance, a Vietnam War vet, and a sheriff. Chigurh is after the money that the vet is carrying, and must escape capture by the sheriff.
WhileNo Country for Old Menplays like a Western, it’s narratively distinct in its ending. Unlike in a classic Western where the villain is confronted by the lawmen and punished, the Vet is killed, and Chigurh successfully retrieves the money after killing his wife too. The sheriff is unable to bring Chigurh to justice, and the atmosphere adds to the sense of defeat asit functions as social commentary on how ruthless the world can often be. However, Chigurh gets in a car accident at the end, and while he’ll most likely survive, he doesn’t escape unscathed.
Saw
Saw is the first installment in the horror franchise directed by James Wan. Released in 2004, the film follows two men who awake shackled in a derelict bathroom, discovering they are part of a sadistic game orchestrated by the enigmatic Jigsaw, requiring them to follow cryptic instructions to survive.
Sawis equal parts crime thriller, horror movie, and character drama. The versatile screenplay gives director James Wan the perfect stage to introduce his all-time great villain that would inspire a franchise that’s 10 movies long and still going. Most crime movies where the villains win introduce the villain early on, and they are a key player in the occurrences. However, withSaw,this is simultaneously true and false. The twist ending reveals that the dead body in the room is alive, and he was the narrative villain who emerges victorious.
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However, on a moral level, his villainy is debatable as, albeit with extreme means that would justify calling him a villain, he has made two morally dubious people confront themselves. However, they didn’t deserve the ends they met, and for all purposes, Jigsaw really is a villain. He takes the unsuspecting characters on an intense and emotional journey of reconciling their actions while he lies there and watches them undergo torture. The sequel continues the trend, as it’s one of thehorror movies where the heroes are the villains.
The Usual Suspects
Written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer, The Usual Suspects is a Mystery film that features Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, and Benicio del Toro. The plot unfolds during an interrogation in which a con man speaks to investigators about what happened, being one of only two men that survived a massacre at the Port of Los Angeles.
The villain is there the whole time, and he’s literally in police custody throughout the runtime as the movie unfolds through flashbacks, and even then,The Usual Suspectsends with the villain’s victory. With one of the greatest closing lines of all time, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”,The Usual Suspectends with a great twistthat belongs in the pages of movie history.
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Kevin Spacey’s Verbal Kint gives a detective his testimony about working with a notorious crime boss who is known as Keyser Söze. The police have a drawing that resembles Kint, and so, he’s stuck trying to convince them that he couldn’t possibly be Söze. He tells them an elaborate story about Söze that explains his reputation.Söze is almost like a mythological figure, but Kint hints that the dead man the police have found was Söze. However, it is hinted in the final scene that Kint was Söze all along, and he has officially escaped capture.
The Vanishing
The Vanishing is a psychological thriller directed by George Sluizer, based on the novel The Golden Egg by Tim Krabbé. The film follows a Dutch couple on vacation, where the woman mysteriously disappears. The subsequent search, spearheaded by her desperate boyfriend, becomes an obsession that leads him to unravel the truth behind her disappearance. Celebrated for its suspenseful narrative and chilling conclusion, The Vanishing is a thought-provoking exploration of human psychology and obsession.
One of the best villains of all time isThe Vanishing’s protagonist, who successfully kidnaps and murders a weapon to prove to himself that he’s capable of unspeakable horror. With just the motivation todo wrong so he can feel like he’s earned the appreciation he deserves for his good deed, he sets upon his task with a bone-chilling, calculated demeanor. The amount of meticulous planning on his part makes his screen presence unnerving and disconcerting.
George Sluizer himself directed the American remake ofThe Vanishingin 1993, but due to executive pressure from the actors, he changed the ending to a happier one, a decision he has come to regret in later years, which critics didn’t respond to positively either.
However, there’s another protagonist, whose presence makes the antagonist’s villainy even more terrifying. It’s the boyfriend of the missing woman. He’s unable to move on, regularly gets baited by the killer for laughs, and is nearly driven mad by his drive to find his missing girlfriend. The killer eventually offers the boyfriend a chance to experience what his girlfriend went through, and he accepts, only to wake up buried alive. This haunting ending cuts to a shot of the killer having a regular day at home with his family, cementing the villain’s victory.
Se7en
David Fincher’s crime thriller Se7en follows the seasoned Detective William Somerset after he is assigned a new partner, the young and idealistic David Mills (Brad Pitt). The two find themselves investigating a deranged killer staging murders inspired by each of the seven deadly sins. On the hunt for the twisted John Doe (Kevin Spacey) before he can kill again, the two detectives soon discover that they’re much deeper into the case than they realized.
One of cinema’s greatest coincidences is that both the movies with Kevin Spacey’s iconic villains who win after interacting with the police were released in 1995. However, unlike Keyser Söze, Spacey’s John Doe fromSe7enisn’t capable of escaping unscathed, even though he does win. He successfully achieves what he set out to do – punishing people’s inadequacies that he has observed in them, including his own, but that planinevitably involves dying at the hands of the lead detectiveon his case.
Brad Pitt plays said detective and his partner is played by Morgan Freeman, who laments at the end of the film with one ofthe most impactful final lines in moviesever. His observation that the world is worth fighting for, even if he doesn’t believe it’s a fine place, comes after watching his partner kill John Doe. Doe wins the game of chess at the end, after killing the detective’s wife and incurring his wrath. The chilling conclusion, especially Doe’s death, establishes how far he’s willing to go just to make a point.
Gone Girl
Based on Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel, Gone Girl stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy Dunne, a couple whose disintegrating marriage is rocked by Amy’s sudden disappearance and Nick’s suspected hand in it. As evidence begins to pile up against Nick, it eventually becomes clear with a shocking twist that all is not what it seems. Flynn also wrote the screenplay for the film, with David Fincher directing.
Calling Amy Dunne a villain can be a contentious opinion, given the amount of support she receives on social media asa sympathetic character who people claim “did nothing wrong”(viaX). However, in the traditional sense of the word, given that she committed murder and falsely created a story of rape to make it seem like self-defense, she qualifies as a villain who won.
Like her or not, she’s still an iconic villain who won.
Amy’s actions in framing her husband for her disappearance as a means to punish him for cheating on her and taking her for granted don’t make her a villain, though. However, she makes it clear to him that his life would be in danger if he ever tried to divorce her, and theterrifying ending toGone Girlseems like a traditional villain’s triumph. The entire film can be read as a story of a woman triumphantly punishing her deadbeat husband, but that ignores that she commits literal murder too. Like her or not, she’s still an iconic villain who won.
Zodiac
Zodiac is a crime thriller directed by David Fincher, detailing the true story of the unsolved Zodiac Killer case. Centered on journalist Paul Avery, detective David Toschi, and cartoonist Robert Graysmith, the narrative follows their intersecting paths as they attempt to uncover the identity of the elusive murderer.
David Fincher seemingly has a thing for victorious villains. Apart fromSe7en,Gone Girl, andZodiac,eventheFight Clubendingclearly shows the villain being successful despite dying. Based on two books by journalist Robert Graysmith, who is played by Jake Gyllenhaal as the main character inZodiac, the movie tells the real story of how the press and the police tried to catch the Zodiac killer.
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What makes the villain’s win inZodiacparticularly haunting is this aspect – the fact that it’s based on real-lifecrimeevents. While it’s not surprising that a serial killer, despite leading the law on a wild goose chase with his clues, was never apprehended in an era before DNA recognition, it’s a disqueting reality. The movie’s focus on the investigation instead of on the killer further adds to the helplessness viewers experience, which reflects the law enforcers' experiences. While the alleged killer supposedly died prior to identification, he was never apprehended, and thus, technically won.
