Death is not something that is unusual for a Coen brothers movie. The unique filmmakers flawlessly jump back and forth between dramas and comedies, but there is usually an ever-present sense of violence to their work, and someone is usually going to end up dead by the end of the film.
With their dark take on the world, the Coens are rarely concerned with meeting audience expectations, which sometimes means the characters who die are undeserving of such a fate. Of course, they also deal with a lot of truly evil and sadistic characters who perhaps deserve their eventual violent end.
Didn’t Deserve: Jean Lundegaard – Fargo (1996)
The Coens’ masterpiece, Fargo is a film about what happens when a bunch of idiots try to pull off the perfect crime. Unfortunately, Jean Lundegaard finds herself in the center of the mess as her husband Jerry hires men to kidnap her.
Jean is a very kind person and seems to be a loving wife and mother. Her husband’s own greed puts her in danger and even though the ransom money is paid, the kidnappers kill her for no apparent reason. She is the victim of a senseless crime.
Did Deserve: Marty – Blood Simple (1984)
The Coens made their debut with the noir thriller, Blood Simple. The movie follows Marty, a sketchy bar owner who enlists an even sketchier private detective to eliminate his wife and her lover.
Marty is a vile guy who treats his wife poorly and then gets upset when she wants to leave him. In the cowardly act of hiring someone to kill her, his dark side is further revealed. So when the private detective turns the tables and kills Marty instead, it’s hard to feel sorry for him.
Didn’t Deserve: Chad Feldheimer – Burn After Reading (2008)
The Coens have always been great at mixing comedy with the dark subject matter. Such is the case in the goofy yet shocking comedy, Burn After Reading. After finding what they think are classified documents in the locker room, two gym employees attempt to use them for blackmail.
Chad is the dimmer of the conspirators but is only in it to help out his desperate friend, Linda. She convinces Chad to sneak into someone’s house and steal more information. While hiding in a closet, Chad spooks the federal agent living there, who promptly shoots poor Chad in the face.
Did Deserve: Leonard Smalls – Raising Arizona (1987)
In Raising Arizona, a couple is desperate for a child but are unable to have one themselves. After hearing of a family with six newborns, they decide to take one and raise it as their own. While their crime is obviously bad, they are not the worst people after a baby in the movie.
A bounty hunter named Leonard Smalls offers the parents to track down the missing baby. When they refuse, he decides he will take the baby and sell it. He is a terrifying brute of a man who has no sympathy for innocent creatures. Luckily, he is blown up with his own grenades before he can get the baby.
Didn’t Deserve: Donny – The Big Lebowski (1998)
Donny is one of the members of the bowling team that includes The Dude and Walter. As his teammates get deeper and deeper into a kidnapping conspiracy, Donny innocently stands on the sidelines, not getting involved, and constantly being told to shut up by Walter.
However, Donny is unwittingly dragged into a fight with some crazy nihilists. While he is unharmed in the fight, the excitement causes him to suffer a heart attack and die in the parking lot of the bowling alley.
Did Deserve: Bernie Bernbaum – Miller’s Crossing (1990)
The Coen Brothers took on the gangster genre with Miller’s Crossing, a film about dangerous people double-crossing one another. The biggest cheat of all is Bernie Bernbaum, a gambler who gets on the wrong side of a gangster named Casper.
When gangster Tom is ordered to kill Bernie, he takes pity on the pathetic man and allows him to run. However, Bernie quickly returns and uses Tom’s mercy to blackmail him. But in the end, Tom doesn’t make the same mistake twice.
Didn’t Deserve: Carla Jean Moss – No Country For Old Men (2007)
When a man named Llewelyn Moss finds a suitcase filled with money out in the desert, he becomes the target of some dangerous men. The most dangerous of them all is a man named Anton Chigurh, who makes it his mission to hunt Moss down.
After Moss is killed by other parties, Chigurh decides to clean up their unfinished business with his wife. Though she didn’t steal anything and was not part of her husband’s plans, Chigurh holds her responsible and kills her to fulfill his warped idea of the world.
Did Deserve: Tom Chaney – True Grit (2011)
The Western True Grit stars Hailee Steinfeld as a young girl named Mattie Ross who heads out on a quest with a U.S. Marshal to find the man who killed her father. It is not until the end of the film that they finally find the man named Tom Chaney.
Chaney proves to be a pathetic man, always complaining about his lot in life. He captures Mattie and plans to kill her to cover his tracks. Mattie is able to outwit the outlaw and manages to shoot him dead.
Didn’t Deserve: Artist – The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018)
The story “Meal Ticket” is one of the darker stories in the Coens’ anthology Western film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. This vignette follows a traveling show in which a young man with no arms or legs recites classic poems and monologues for audiences.
His partner begins getting despaired by the lack of business. After seeing a chicken that does tricks draw a crowd, the man buys the chicken and replaces the performer. To avoid having to care for him, the man throws the performer in a river to drown.
Did Deserve: Big Dan Teague – O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? follows three escaped convicts who make their way through the American South in search of a buried treasure. Along the way, they meet various characters, including the one-eyed Big Dan Teague.
Though he presents himself as a friendly stranger, Big Dan quickly turns into a violent goon who beats the convicts, steals their money, and kills their frog. To make him even more detestable, he is later revealed to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. But he receives a fitting death when the burning cross at their racist ceremony comes crossing down on top of him.
