Crime movies 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 are beloved movies where the villain actually wins.

However, it’s still comparatively a rare occurrence, and especially crime movies, even some of the greatest gangster movies that defined the genre, tell stories of triumphs for the justice system. From films with sympathetic villains to movies 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.

10

Body Heat (1981)

Directed By Lawrence Kasdan

When Billy Wilder made Double Indemnity in 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 on Body 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.

Kasdan, who also wrote The Empire Strikes Back, one of the 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 Heat is 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.

9

Basic Instinct (1992)

Directed By Paul Verhoeven

Verhoeven, known for his sleazy crime thrillers, directed Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, her most famous character in Basic 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 of Sharon Stone’s best movies, it follows Catherine as she takes the detectives for a ride during their investigation.

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 Sєxual 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 that she eventually kills him after having Sєx with him, so she successfully escapes arrest and wins as the villain.

8

Chinatown (1974)

Directed By Roman Polanski

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 in the ending of Chinatown. 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.

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, represents the underbelly of criminal America and the illusion of fairness in 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.

7

No Country For Old Men (2007)

Directed By Ethan & Joel Coen

One of the action 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.

While No Country for Old Men plays 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 as it 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.

6

Saw (2004)

Directed By James Wan

Saw is 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, with Saw, this is simultaneously true and false. The twist ending reveals that the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ body in the room is alive, and he was the narrative villain who emerges victorious.

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 the horror movies where the heroes are the villains.

5

The Usual Suspects (1995)

Directed By Bryan Singer

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 Suspects ends 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 Suspect ends with a great twist that belongs in the pages of movie history.

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 ᴅᴇᴀᴅ 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.

4

The Vanishing (1988)

Directed By George Sluizer

One of the best villains of all time is The 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 to do 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.

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 sH๏τ of the killer having a regular day at home with his family, cementing the villain’s victory.

3

Se7en (1995)

Directed By David Fincher

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 from Se7en isn’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 plan inevitably involves dying at the hands of the lead detective on 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 of the most impactful final lines in movies ever. 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.

2

Gone Girl (2014)

Directed By David Fincher

Calling Amy Dunne a villain can be a contentious opinion, given the amount of support she receives on social media as a sympathetic character who people claim “did nothing wrong” (via X). 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.

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 the terrifying ending to Gone Girl seems like a traditional villain’s triumph. The entire film can be read as a story of a woman triumphantly punishing her ᴅᴇᴀᴅbeat husband, but that ignores that she commits literal murder too. Like her or not, she’s still an iconic villain who won.

1

Zodiac (2007)

Directed By David Fincher

David Fincher seemingly has a thing for victorious villains. Apart from Se7en, Gone Girl, and Zodiac, even the Fight Club ending clearly 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 in Zodiac, the movie tells the real story of how the press and the police tried to catch the Zodiac killer.

What makes the villain’s win in Zodiac particularly haunting is this aspect – the fact that it’s based on real-life crime events. 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.