Fargo (DVD 2003)

The irony of the title 'Fargo' is bleakly overdone, as the film stays in Brainerd County and that's as far as one needs go, unless oil is discovered there and then it would be 'Wells Fargo'! Snowbound parochial life is depicted as stifling conformity turned into a cliché of itself set against the pathetic remedies of a losing car-salesman hiring two abductors so to split the ransom! The film's theme of social conformity v psychopathic nonconformity highlights the empty point of both and is an entertaining criticism of society's norms!
The father-in-law's character failed to include him and his accomplice in the terminal denseness of society's materialistic ambitions until too late when he got shot for demanding to see his daughter before handing over the ransom. This trivialised his character, otherwise sharper than his son-in-law's, as a textual weakness from an imbalance between financial shrewdness and a lack of care for his own safety! Perhaps that might have been remedied by Jerry desperately pleading the father could even jeopardise his own safety! But the authors wanted to make a point about stupidity. One may need be smart to do that! I liked the film's dark humour, sharply highlighted in barren snow, but got the impression this sat north of the border in Canada than Minnesota.
Bravo for the shot of the psychopath (a man of few words) wielding an axe from behind at his partner. There could have been a religious moment with the woman's feet in socks being reduced in the shredder (Margie, with gun, challenging "That isn't the end of her, Bucko!") but the authors missed it. The comfortable darkened interiors of roadside restaurants seemed to be in complete harmony with the affable character of the father-in-law's henchman. The local patois sounded of Norwegian origin, to reinforce the theme of native simplicity, but it never seemed overdone, even by Margie's programmed deputy! The music aptly reflects a detached strangeness including sparse Elizabethan grounds for viols, although there's plenty of grounds for all sorts of viles! The episode of the kidnapped woman running around hooded, trussed like a headless chicken, in the snow in bare feet pointlessly trying to escape was a statement of utmost irony re reactive behaviour devoid of sense, a level on which most of the locals seemed to operate as a comforting milieu.
I know this film makes a brilliantly terse statement of dark humour but, in trying to review it, I get to feel something is missing - a plot that goes further and, perhaps, deeper. Obviously talented directors.

KEEP WATCHING IT ON TV AND BEING INTRIGUED AND THEN NEVER BEING ABLE TO WATCH THE ENDING, GREAT FILM. WILLIAM MACY GREAT ACTOR AND MARGE THE PREGGERS POLICE WOMAN IS HYSTERICAL IN A SICK SENSE. FACTUAL TRUE STORY WITH A VERY BLACK COMEDY TWIST BUT EXCELLENT. KEEPS YOU GLUED.

With this film, a thriller of kidnap and betrayal shot through with the blackest of comedy, the Coen brothers finally achieved greatness. The direction, acting, screenplay and cinematography are all quite superb and as with all great films the time passes in the blink of an eye. Frances McDormand thoroughly deserved her best actress oscar. Her interpretation of the Coen's fantastic script is just perfect. I believe this film will soon come to be recognized as one of the greatest films of all time.