10 Most Essential Coen Brothers Films

This CIA satire may be less critically beloved than many of the pair’s cinematic outings, and it’s certainly the coldest comedy they’ve produced in their decades spent making movies. Indeed, almost everyone onscreen in this internal affairs farce is either too stupid, too craven, too crazy, or too all of the above to root for as anything resembling a hero—and the only character innocent enough to believe pays a high price for their relative decency.

Yet that’s pretty fitting for a film as angry and uncompromising as this one, which sees Brad Pitt’s gormless gym attendant and a nervy, typically superb Frances McDormand attempt to blackmail the “intelligence” community, encountering an unhinged John Malkovich and George Clooney in the process.

One of the most vicious indictments of America’s surveillance state in post-Iraq mainstream film, this flick also manages to be hysterically funny and undeniably clever, if a touch too hopeless and coolly detached for the top spot.