Directed by Joel Coen • 2001 • United States, United Kingdom Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini

The Coen brothers put their inimitable, offbeat stamp on the noir genre with this moody tale of adultery, revenge, and suburban despair distinguished by Roger Deakins’s rich, gray-textured cinematography and its dark existential themes. In the vein of a classic James M. Cain antihero, Billy Bob Thornton stars as Ed Crane, an unhappy barber living in 1940s California who, when he discovers that his wife (Frances McDormand) has been unfaithful, concocts a blackmailing scheme to teach her a lesson. When his plan backfires, he becomes embroiled in a murderous plot with increasingly dire consequences.