10 Great Movies Where the Villain Is the Hero

Sometimes we just can’t help rooting for the bad guy.

Many of cinema’s most captivating movies flip morality on its head, drawing viewers into the world of the antihero or sympathetic villain, or even heroes who do very bad things.

For instance, movies such as Jennifer’s Body and Catch Me If You Can challenge us by making us sympathize with, root for, or even admire characters who lie, cheat, steal, or kill.

In 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, a high school girl brutally kills and devours teenage boys after she’s kidnapped and murdered during a demonic ritual gone wrong. While Jennifer is presented as the horror movie’s antagonist, she’s also a tragic figure and a victim in her own right, making viewers empathetic toward her even after her resurrection as a flesh-eating succubus.

In the 2002 crime comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can, main protagonist Frank Abagnale Jr. is a con artist who uses his charm and brilliance to evade the authorities while committing all sorts of non-violent crimes. He forges documents, defrauds banks, and impersonates a variety of professionals including posing as a doctor and a pilot. Still, his tragic backstory, magnetic charisma, and fierce determination makes us want to watch him succeed in his crimes.

These movies work because they offer more than just crime or chaos, drawing audiences in with complex messages about morality, right and wrong, justice, ambition, and retribution, even sometimes reflecting our own flaws and contradictions back at us.

Ultimately, we’re not rooting for the bad things they do — we’re rooting for complexity. Yes, they’re technically “bad guys” because of what they do, but they aren’t just villains or antiheroes. They’re reflections of human nature, making them strangely easy to cheer for even as they do some pretty awful things on screen.

Below, discover 10 more great films that make viewers root for the bad guy.

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