"Town's full of bright boys."

After sixty-three years, the opening of Robert Siodmak's The Killers still stands as one of the best in cinematic history. The big city menaces the moral order of the small town when two nameless goons descend on a Brentwood diner, looking for "the Swede." They want to kill him. Their intentions are revealed in a dialogue as tense as it is baffling to the locals.

David Cronenberg aimed for the same vibe in the vastly overrated A History of Violence, but failed by, among other things, troweling on the Mystique of Small Town America.