10 Hyped Movie Villains Who Turned Out To Be Just Henchmen

The marketing for Michael Mann's Collateral painted Tom Cruise as a merciless, ruthless, villainous hitman who had no issues with killing anyone who got in his way, and that's exactly what he turned out to be in the film.

One of Hollywood's biggest stars who's usually found playing the likeable hero, the idea of Cruise stepping into a more evil pair of shoes was almost unheard of, and this generated a lot of interest in Collateral, and whether or not it would give Vincent a redemptive arc which would preserve Cruise's good guy image.

But the movie did no such thing. Cruise is a definite bad guy here, with his murdering of innocent people and the enjoyment he took from it both contributing to a Tom Cruise character that nobody was used to seeing.

But as cold and calculated as Vincent was, he was still on a leash. The movie revealed that he had been hired by Javier Bardem's Felix Reyes-Torrena, a drug lord who employed Vincent to kill four witnesses and a prosecutor in order to stop his impending trial. Felix effectively sets the events of the movie in motion, and in a way, this makes him the real enemy.

Unfortunately for Felix, Vincent's final target - Annie - survives, and it's assumed she goes on to testify in court. The lesson here is that you should never hire Tom Cruise to do your dirty work.