No Country for Old Men (2007)

The Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel subverts every genre expectation, with a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score that belies its polarizing finale. Chigurh's cattle bolt gun is used in three separate killings, each less than 30 seconds long, yet their cumulative impact exceeds that of any action sequence in Sicario (2015). This is a thriller that refuses catharsis, leaving audiences with the unsettling truth that fate, not justice, rules the borderlands.