The Coen brothers rank among the greatest filmmakers who ever lived because they always manage to subvert their audience’s expectations of their chosen genres and story structures. With their signature pitch-black humor and cynical, hard-edged storytelling, the Coens have delivered some of the most shocking plot twists in cinema history.
Sometimes, these twists will contribute some terror or dramatic resonance to the proceedings. Other times, the twists are played for laughs. Either way, the Coens are masters of taking jaw-dropping left turns in the trajectory of their narratives. So, here are the 10 best plot twists from the Coens’ filmography, ranked.
Gurney Drops The Briefcase In The Ocean (Hail, Caesar!)
While movie star, Baird Whitlock, is indoctrinated by a band of communist sympathizers known as “The Future.” When Hobie Doyle spots musical star Burt Gurney carrying the briefcase filled with ransom money, he follows him up to The Future’s beach house.
However, when he gets there, he finds that he’s too late and Gurney has already been taken out to a Soviet submarine to defect to Russia. As his dog jumps into his arms, he drops the briefcase full of cash into the ocean.
Donny Has A Heart Attack (The Big Lebowski)
Satirizing the hard-boiled traditions of Raymond Chandler, The Big Lebowski’s convoluted mystery plot is riddled with twists, from Jackie Treehorn drugging the Dude to Bunny staging her own kidnapping. But arguably, the most shocking twist in the film arrives when Donny suffers a fatal heart attack while Walter is fending off the nihilists.
The plot basically resolves itself and then takes a sudden sharp left turn. The kidnapping storyline turns out to be insignificant, as a grieving Dude and Walter organize their fallen friend’s funeral.
Harry Shoots Chad In The Face (Burn After Reading)
In Burn After Reading, gym employees Linda and Chad stumble upon a hard drive containing the memoirs of an ex-CIA agent. To leverage some blackmail cash, they take the hard drive to the Russian embassy and promise to follow it up with more files. Linda persuades Chad to break into the ex-agent’s house and steal some more information.
However, the ex-agent’s wife’s lover, Harry, comes into the house to take a quick shower. Chad hides in the closet and when Harry finds him, he instinctively shoots him in the face. The abrupt death of a major character – and one played by Brad Pitt at that – was a mind-blowing twist in the tale.
A Cowboy Is Sentenced To Death While He’s Unconscious (The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs)
In the “Near Algodones” segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a cowboy robs a bank. But the teller is prepared, as he arms himself with pots and pans and then knocks out the cowboy with the butt of his shotgun.
When the cowboy awakens, he discovers that he was convicted of the robbery and sentenced to death while he was unconscious. He’s sitting atop his horse beneath a tree branch with a noose around his neck.
Gaear Kills Jean And Carl (Fargo)
The opening scenes of Fargo establish the movie as the story of a man who’s so desperate that he hires two goons to kidnap his wife Jean in order to leverage some ransom money from his wealthy father-in-law. However, by the end of the movie, the kidnapping has become insignificant.
When Carl returns to the cabin after being shot in the side of the head by the father-in-law in a hand-off gone wrong, he finds that Gaear has killed Jean. And, after an argument about which one of them will keep the car, he kills Carl, too.
Bernie Blackmails Tom After He Spared His Life (Miller’s Crossing)
Midway through Miller’s Crossing, Tom Reagan is recruited to take Bernie out into the woods and kill him. Bernie begs for his life (“Look into your heart!”) until Tom reluctantly agrees to let him go on the condition that he leave town immediately.
However, Bernie doesn’t leave town. Instead, he puts a corpse in the woods where his own should’ve been and uses his knowledge of the situation to blackmail Tom – who just spared his life – into killing Caspar.
Visser Shoots Marty With Abby’s Gun (Blood Simple)
Expertly bringing the tropes of the film noir into Blood Simple instantly established the duo as a filmmaking force to be reckoned with.
Around halfway through the movie, the sinister Lorren Visser shoots Julian Marty, the man who hired him to kill his wife Abby and her lover Ray, with Abby’s gun, which Marty had ironically given her as a gift.
A Tornado Looms (A Serious Man)
The Coens’ biblical dark comedy A Serious Man uses the story of Larry Gopnik, a Minnesota Jewish family man whose life falls apart spectacularly over the course of an unfortunate week, as an allegory for the story of Job.
At the end of the movie, Larry gets a call from his doctor, telling him he needs to talk to him right away about the results of his chest X-ray. Meanwhile, a giant tornado looms on the town as Danny’s teacher struggles to open the school’s emergency shelter.
Charlie Meadows Is Actually A Serial Killer Named Karl Mundt (Barton Fink)
The Coen brothers decided to cast John Goodman as Charlie Meadows because he had the sweet, unsuspecting presence that the character needed to have to sell himself as an insurance salesman moving into the Hotel Earle.
That’s what makes the revelation that Charlie’s real name is Karl “Man” Mundt and he’s a serial killer whose M.O. is decapitating people all the more disturbing. He seemed like such a nice guy!
Sheriff Bell Finds Llewelyn Moss Dead In His Motel Room (No Country For Old Men)
What makes this twist work so well is that it plays on the audience’s expectations of narratives. We don’t expect the lead protagonist to be killed off-screen, or by someone other than the hitman antagonist, so the fact that Sheriff Bell finds Llewelyn Moss lying dead in his motel room in the middle of the second act – after promising to protect Moss – is harrowing.
Usually, when writers put a spin on the traditional story structure, it’s disappointing, because we expect everything to tie together. But in the case of No Country for Old Men, it gives the whole movie a harrowing layer of realism.
