20 Movies Where We Root For the Bad Guys (2024)

No matter how complicated they get, most movies break down into a very basic conflict: the good guy fights the bad guy until the good guy wins.

Again, that’s most movies. In some surprising cases, the bad guy grabs the audience’s attention and never lets go. Sometimes, the bad guy has a point that makes them much more likable than the supposed hero. Other times, the bad guy is played by an actor who is so charming and charismatic that viewers cannot help but cheer.

In these 20 movies, the bad guy makes good, earning the viewers’ applause.

1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

In the novels written by Thomas Harris, Hannibal Lecter toys with his victims before consuming them, breaking down their minds and then their bodies. He plays these games according to his personal morality, a snobbery that allows him to look down on others.

Most people would find Lecter distasteful (pardon the pun) based on his arrogance alone. Anthony Hopkins’ Academy Award-winning performance made Lecter’s personality not just acceptable but also admirable. So popular was Hopkins’s take that Harris had to write a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, leading to the divisive Hannibal.

2. The Dark Knight (2008)

No right-thinking person truly wants the Joker to win in The Dark Knight. He murders without reason and thrives on ruining lives. Even those who make the foolish decision to admire the Joker realize on some level that the “Clown Prince of Crime” would turn on them like he does everyone else.

Still, even the most reserved viewer cannot help but cheer whenever Heath Ledger steps on screen in The Dark Knight. Ledger has to contend with other magnetic performers, including Christian Bale as Batman and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. Not even these strong personalities can wrestle the screen from Ledger, making audiences pull for him, at least in the movies.

3. The Godfather (1974)

The most brilliant part of The Godfather trilogy might occur in the opening minutes of the first film. That’s when the undertaker Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto) pleads with Godfather Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) to give justice for his attacked daughter. Through that monologue, viewers understand one reason that the mafia exists, to support immigrants that the United States government sometimes ignores.

Thanks to that opening, the audience maintains sympathy for members of the Corleone family, despite their sometimes hateful actions. Francis Ford Coppola and his co-writer Mario Puzo, who wrote the source novel, foreground the tragedy of Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) inability to make the family business legit.

4. Friday the 13th (1980)

As any movie fan knows, Jason Voorhees isn’t the killer in Friday the 13th. Instead, his mother Pamela (Betsy Palmer) does the murders to prevent the re-opening of Camp Crystal Lake. As Pamela explains in her climactic monologue, Jason drowned while counselors partied, and she takes the reopening as a personal affront.

That might sound like a poor reason to start a killing spree, but the victims in Friday the 13th are so vapid and irritating, even when played by a young Kevin Bacon, that no one mourns their passing. Add in some outstanding effects by Tom Savini, and audiences cheer for Mrs. Voorhees, a tradition that continues when Jason takes up his mother’s mission in later films.

5. Fight Club (1999)

No screen character has ever been cooler than Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt in his prime. And that makes sense since Tyler Durden was conjured by the soft-spoken Narrator (Edward Norton). Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club satirizes the disaffected young men who turn toward violence to deal with modern feelings of inadequacy.

Director David Fincher and screenwriter Jim Uhls give viewers plenty of reasons to dislike Durden, which grow as the alter-ego enacts his terrorist campaign “Project Mayhem.” Yet, no matter how hard they try to highlight Durden’s worst qualities, Pitt cannot help but make the madman attractive, embodying a quiet nerd’s idea of the perfect alpha hero.

6. Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock does his best to turn the audience against Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) at the start of Psycho. She’s introduced as an unmarried woman in an illicit relationship with her boyfriend, a big no-no at the time, and she steals money from her boss before she checks in for the night at Bates Motel. Furthermore, Anthony Perkins plays Norman Bates as a sweet kid who loves his mom.

For most of the film, Hitchcock allows viewers to blame the killings on Mrs. Bates, who goes unseen until the end. Yet, even after the reveal that Mrs. Bates has passed and lives on as a figment of her son’s murderous imagination, Perkins lets Norman stay a nice guy, so innocent he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

7. Heat (1995)

The crime epic Heat brings together two legends of the screen, letting them share a scene for the first time. Al Pacino plays LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, an intense cop who always gets his man, while Robert De Niro plays professional thief Neil McCauley. Like most movies by director Michael Mann, Heat traces the rising tensions between the two leads, both of them tough guys who cannot see any other way to live.

Most movies would make Detective Hanna the hero, but Heat deals with shades of gray. Pacino gives one of his best, most outsized performances in the role, playing a guy who uses his badge to bully other people. In contrast, De Niro keeps it cool as McCauley, a guy with principles and a code, despite the violence that kicks off the film.

8. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

At first, A Clockwork Orange seems like a forerunner to The Dark Knight, with its charismatic and brutal protagonist, Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell). Alex and his band of baddies called the Droogs commit all manner of heinous acts in London, a level of ultra-violence that still shocks viewers today. Yet director Stanley Kubrick, adapting the novel by Anthony Burgess, presents it in such a stunning manner, and McDowell has such screen presence that viewers cannot help but be entranced by him.

In the second half of the movie, that sympathy grows. After Alex gets detained by the police, he’s put through a series of inhumane treatments to sap the life out of him. Alex becomes a victim of a much more terrifying force in the form of the government, which makes him even more relatable to the viewer.

9. Inside Man (2006)

Long before audiences know the motivations driving bank robber Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) in Inside Man, they cannot help but admire him. His professionalism and code make him an attractive bad guy, something that does not slip the attention of Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington). Furthermore, Frazier comes to the investigation after a scandal that tarnishes him in the eyes of the viewer and raises Russell in esteem.

That respect doubles when viewers realize why Russell has pulled off this audacious heist. It won’t be spoiled here, but Russell has much more than mere bank robbery in mind, something that Inside Man director Spike Lee and screenwriter Russell Gewirtz keep hidden until late in the film when a buried secret reveals itself and changes the tone of the film.

10. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

It’s not just Matt Damon’s charm as an actor that makes audiences pull for Tom Ripley, the central character of The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s also the disgust and jealousy that the audience feels toward the extravagant and wealthy Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), whom Ripley kills and impersonates in this psychological thriller, written and directed by Anthony Minghella, from the novel by Patricia Highsmith.

Besides his “aw-shucks” persona, Damon does little to ingratiate Ripley toward the audience. But even after Dickie gets dispatched, audiences feel intrigued by Ripley’s game and want him to continue evading capture. He pulls the viewer in by virtue of his talent alone.

11. X-Men (2000)

The superhero movie X-Men begins in a manner that some might consider offensive. Before getting into battles between costumed characters, the film opens in Auschwitz, where the young Erik Lehnsherr (Brett Morris) gets pulled away from his parents. In desperation, Erik reaches for them and his magnetic powers activate, allowing him to tear away the gates of the camp.

With that opening, director Bryan Singer and screenwriter David Hayter make it hard to criticize Lehnsherr’s actions as an adult, even when he becomes the supervillain Magneto (Ian McKellan). Magneto has seen what humans do to those they hate and will not let it happen again to himself or any other mutant.

12. My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)

By 1997, star Julia Roberts had long cemented her reputation as America’s Sweetheart. So when My Best Friend’s Wedding, written by Ronald Bass and directed by P.J. Hogan, begins with Roberts’ food critic Jules realizing that her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) is about to marry someone else, the audience just assumes that she’ll get her man.

And so does Jules, which helps her justify the extreme measures that she takes to disrupt Micheal’s nuptials. My Best Friend’s Wedding makes no pretense toward defending Jules, never turning away from her selfishness nor from the sweetness of Michael’s intended (Cameron Diaz). But at the end of the day, she’s Julia Roberts and audiences cannot help but love her.

13. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Martin Scorsese has made a career out of exposing respected men as insecure jerks who ruin their own lives and the lives of others. However, he does it in flashy, spectacular movies that fool inattentive viewers into mistaking the villain for a hero.

The Wolf of Wall Street may be the best example of the risk that Scorsese runs with his approach. Written by Terence Winter, The Wolf of Wall Street stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the real-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Throughout the movie, Belfort gets rich by making others suffer, taking steps that lead to the financial crash and the Great Recession, which made life worse for many Americans. And yet, some viewers see themselves in Belfort and cheer for him, regardless of his immoral actions.

14. Revenge (2017)

French director Coralie Fargeat pulls no punches with Revenge, her nasty horror movie starring Matilda Lutz. Lutz plays Jennifer, a pretty young woman in an affair with the married Richard (Kevin Janssens). Richard takes Jen to a secluded desert home, where she’s assaulted by his friends while he’s away. After learning about the attack, Richard sides with the other men over Jennifer, and leaves her to die.

In the scenes that follow, Jennifer takes visceral, angry revenge against any man in her way. She dispatches them with as much cruelty as any slasher villain. But because she was a victim first, viewers cannot judge her for her actions. In fact, they want her to win.

15. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)

Classic Westerns tended to hold to simplistic morals. The good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats. No one would confuse the two. The short story “Three-Ten to Yuma,” by Elmore Leonard complicates that dynamic, as does the movie 3:10 to Yuma, directed by Delmer Daves and written by Halsted Welles.

Desperate for money, farmer Dan Evans (Van Heflin) agrees to take notorious killer Ben Wade (Glenn Ford) to the titular train. As the duo waits, both for the train and for the killer’s gang to come and rescue him, Evans and Wade engage in various philosophical conversations. Wade’s intelligence and charisma, captured by a relaxed but complex Ford, make him impossible to dislike.

16. The Little Mermaid (1989)

The ever-flighty mermaid Ariel puts her curiosity before good sense. Eric is a dull sailor who falls for any pretty girl he sees. Even a non-descript villain could win over audiences better than this dull duo.

The Little Mermaid, written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, does not have a non-descript villain. Rather, it has an outsized baddie in the Sea-Witch Ursula, voiced by Pat Carroll. Based on the drag queen Divine, Ursula makes for a much more interesting character than any of the heroes. It’s not just Ariel’s voice that Ursula steals; she steals the whole show.

17. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The New Hollywood movement started with a bang, thanks to Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn and written by David Newman and Robert Benton. Bonnie and Clyde stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the titular killers, a real-life couple who robbed banks and terrorized citizens during the Great Depression.

While Penn doesn’t turn the camera away from the carnage they create, he doesn’t invite viewers to judge the duo either. Instead, he lets Beatty and Dunaway bring their old-school movie glamor to murderous characters. It’s no wonder that Bonnie and Clyde led to a whole new way of thinking about cinema.

18. Nightcrawler (2014)

Portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler protagonist Lou Bloom might be the most disgusting person who ever appeared on screen. Wide-eyed and gaunt, Gyllenhaal plays Bloom with a wired intensity that some might call “personality” and others call “psychopathy.” Disgust for Bloom grows as he gets into the news business, shooting (or staging) crimes and accidents and then selling the footage to a local channel.

Writer and director Dan Gilroy has no particular love for Bloom. The movie lays bare his ambition and his lack of morality. However, Gyllenhaal throws himself into the role so much that he retains a magnetic attraction and gets viewers to his side.

19. Godzilla (1954)

Just think about how many people died when Godzilla attacked Tokyo. He stomps on cities, he breathes atomic breath, and he swipes away enemies with his tail. Nothing can stand in his way, which makes sense. Godzilla is, after all, the embodiment of the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan.

But he’s also a fantastic visual effect and a compelling design, brought to life in the film directed by Ishirō Honda and co-written by Honda and Takeo Murata. Audiences may have feared Godzilla, but they cheered for him too, even those who remember the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, less than a decade earlier.

20. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)

Harley Quinn began life as a Batman villain, making her debut in the classic show Batman: The Animated Series as the Joker’s henchwoman and girlfriend. She’s still something of a villain in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), directed by Cathy Yan and written by Christina Hodson. She does feed a man to her hyena, attack a police station, and betray her teammates at the end.

But she’s played by Margot Robbie, who throws herself into the role and makes Harley an electrifying watch. Furthermore, the movie traces Harley’s self-development as she forges a new identity after dumping her abusive boyfriend. Who wouldn’t cheer for that?