18 Movie Villains Who Totally Get Away With It

The audience doesn't know who Keyser Soze is until the final seconds of The Usual Suspects. That's because even the characters themselves don't know. Soze is a master criminal, famous for never being seen. He's assembled a team of crooks for a major heist, yet none of them have the slightest clue who they're working for. They just know that his reputation terrifies them.

A surprise twist at the end reveals that Soze is actually Verbal Kint, a seemingly not-too-bright guy who's the only survivor of the mission gone wrong. The whole time he's been talking to Customs Agent Dave Kujan, Kint has been making up details on the spot. Items posted on a bulletin board and the name on the bottom of a coffee cup become fuel for the story he's spinning. The ruse is so convincing that Kujan allows Kint to leave the police station. Only after the man has walked down the street and disappeared does the agent realize how badly he's been fooled. By that point, it's too late.

Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) is in jail for killing a Catholic archbishop. He's a young man, only 19 years old, and looking at life in prison. His attorney, Martin Vail (Richard Gere), attempts to use Aaron's diagnosis of dissociative personality disorder as a defense in court. The argument is that Aaron didn't kill the man - his alter ego "Roy" did. It works, getting Aaron transferred to a mental health facility that he'll likely be released from within the space of a few months.

That's Primal Fear in a nutshell, except for one important detail: Aaron doesn't actually have multiple personalities. He faked Roy's existence - or, more accurately, Roy is the real him and mild-mannered Aaron is the invention. Fooling mental health professionals by pretending to have a diagnosis that severe isn't easy. That he succeeds just illustrates the level of his psychopathy. Vail doesn't figure out the ruse until after the trial, so Aaron largely gets away with his crime, receiving no significant punishment.

Anton Chigurh, the psychopath portrayed by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, gets off scot-free because a lawman is too frightened to truly pursue him. Chigurh is a ruthless killer who decides his potential victims' fate through the literal toss of a coin. His weapon of choice is a bolt gun, so you know anybody on the receiving end experiences a deeply unpleasant demise.

The film follows the efforts of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) to capture Chigurh as the lunatic pursues a welder (Josh Brolin) who stumbled across, and made off with, the cash from a drug deal gone bad. Although he doesn't express it outright, the point of No Country for Old Men is that Bell, a veteran lawman, feels overwhelmed by the ruthless nature of modern criminal violence. As such, he becomes freaked out by Chigurh's evil. Instead of continuing to track the killer, he retires.

Chigurh does get injured in a car accident at the end, but he limps off without ever being apprehended.

Amy Dunne, the female lead of Gone Girl, is a self-absorbed, mean-spirited woman. She's married to Nick, a narcissistic, self-centered man. They don't have a marriage made in heaven. No, theirs is made in the other place. Amy is so intent on making Nick suffer for his end of the dysfunction that she fakes her own disappearance, knowing it will put him in the crosshairs of not only the police but also the media. 

After later changing her mind, Amy kills another guy, making it look like he was the kidnapper and that she used self-defense to escape. Then she returns to Nick, who understandably isn't all that jazzed about reconciling. Ever the master manipulator, she reveals that she got herself pregnant from one of the samples he had saved at a fertility clinic. Feeling responsible for his unborn child, Nick agrees to stay with her, despite all the evil things she's done.

Amy is truly one of the most cunning and deceptive characters - male or female - to grace the big screen in the 21st century. Whatever she wants, she gets.

For a while, it certainly doesn't seem like Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter is going to get away with anything. Not only is he in jail, but he's also in a special wing designed for the most dangerous criminals. The walls are made of stone and there's a thick door. He got himself in here for killing people and eating them. Just ask that poor census taker who tried to test him!

About halfway through The Silence of the Lambs, though, Dr. Lecter makes his escape after finagling a trip out of prison. He kills several guards, even wearing one of their faces to aid in his getaway. At the film's end, we discover that he's made his way to the Bahamas, where he plans to "have an old friend for dinner" - that friend being his smarmy nemesis, Dr. Chilton. FBI agent Clarice Starling, who consulted with him on the case of the serial killer known as Buffalo Bill, indicates that she's going to come looking for him eventually. Watching him casually walk away from the payphone where he's just spoken to her, though, it's pretty clear that Lecter won't be returning to jail anytime soon.

Azazel is the name of the demon in the 1998 horror-thriller Fallen. He's capable of transferring from body to body, which ensures that foiling him is almost impossible. Denzel Washington plays Hobbes, a cop trying to track down this otherworldly being after it escapes from the body of a serial killer (Elias Koteas) who's just been executed. Ever the dark trickster, Azazel goes on a rampage, offing people and leaving circumstantial evidence to tie Hobbes to the crimes. 

Fallen builds to a pretty wild conclusion. After inhabiting and then eliminating Hobbes's partner in a remote cabin, Azazel inhabits Hobbes himself. The cop was kind of prepared for this possibility, so he smokes cigarettes laced with poison in an effort to snuff the demon's life out. It appears to work until the film's last shot, during which a possessed cat crawls out from underneath the cabin, letting us know that Azazel will live to spread evil another day. 

What sets this villain apart is that he's an unseen presence, making himself visible only by taking over people's bodies. That ability allows him to avoid facing consequences.