7. Jerry, Carl & Gaear - Fargo
The Coen Brothers are experts at depicting crime capers gone wrong, in which ambitious, over-reaching regular folk get in deep and find their lives very much at risk. Their masterful Fargo is an all-time classic depiction of bungled crime, with foppish Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) playing a superbly desperate yet oddly arrogant sort, who tries to re-assert his manhood following financial ruin with a daring - and foolish - scheme. He hires Steve Buscemi (Carl) and Peter Stormare (Gaear) to essentially fake-kidnap his wife, and then extort Jerry's father in law for a sizable sum of cash that Jerry can in turn use to fix his business. Needless to say, little goes as planned; Jerry ends up arrested, Gaear murders Carl with an axe and then feeds him into a wood-chipper, and Gaear is himself wounded by office Marge (Frances McDormand) before being arrested. Simply brilliant.