4. Albert Brooks, 'Drive'

You don't expect to see Albert Brooks kill someone with a fork and a meat cleaver, but there he is in 'Drive,' hacking away at some poor, doomed slob. Brooks's work in 'Drive' is a reinvention of sorts -- no kidding; see: meat cleaver -- but it also feels like a logical continuation. Underneath the ultra-violence, Brooks's Bernie is just a mobster staring down the his life. Years later, Brook is still lost in America.