Best Laid Plans

As the title suggests -- and many a noir thriller has proved -- even the most carefully thought out schemes are bound to go awry in this imperfect world; a world in which everything revolves around greed, power and, sometimes, spite, as one character in this satisfyingly tight and twisty thriller points out. A seemingly innocent evening spent playing catch-up with an old college acquaintance leads to a night of hell-on-earth for Nick (Alessandro Nivola), a frustrated college graduate whose degree in history has earned him a dead-end job at the recycling plant in his dreary hometown. Hours after leaving buddy Bryce (Josh Brolin) at a local dive, Nick gets a panicked...