10 Best Movies Where The Protagonist Learns Nothing

8. No Country For Old Men

The Coen brothers have a habit of presenting us with characters who don't much change throughout their journeys - The Dude (Jeff Bridges) in The Big Lebowski being another shining example - and in 2007, their unconventional approach won them three Oscars (including Best Picture).

In fairness, No Country for Old Men doesn't really have a fixed protagonist, with Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) pretty much standing on equal footing as focal characters.

And each of them is very much the same person at the end as they are first presented to the audience.

Though the viewer expects Moss to have a climactic showdown with Chigurh, he's killed before he can go through any sort of transformative heroic experience, while Bell is left powerless to battle the violent world around him and Chigurh escapes with the money.

You could argue that Bell's final realisation that he's just waiting for death is an epiphany of sorts, but it's not exactly like the guy was a paragon of utility and usefulness throughout the film. He's still on the same axis, just going through the motions.