Not only was it projected from a mile away, it would've been gloriously refreshing to have a movie like this without a "villain" mucking things up. They were facing about a hundred different types of interesting adversity without One-Note Greedy Human Archetype making an appearance.

Plus, as a hundred uninteresting thinkpieces have already astutely pointed out, at that point in the film, Cooper just wanted to go home to his kids. Why would the guy who just wants to go home have to try to murder the other guy who just wants to go home, other than "this movie needs a scene with its hero fighting a villain"? There are a dozen or so interesting choices the film can make there, and it took the neatest, most familiar, and most linear plotwise choice. Which is disappointing.