Frances & The Coens at Their Oscar-Winning Finest!

Rating: 10/10 (11 July 2005)

Even people I know who can't stand the Coen Brothers' style *love* this slyly low-key comedy-thriller. Unlike so many "offbeat" movies, the quirkiness of FARGO's Oscar-winning screenplay never cancels out its warmth or suspense as the Coens deftly balance clever plotting (*not* really based on a true story, as a poor disturbed Japanese woman found out when she came to the U.S. to dig up the hidden ransom money only to freeze to death trying), engaging characters, scares, poignancy, and the brothers' trademark loopy humor. Darkly hilarious as the kidnappers' bungling is, it renders the violence all the more chilling; one minute you're laughing, the next minute you're cringing over the shock of sympathetic characters meeting swift, bloody deaths. I found myself feeling terribly sorry for poor, sweet, unsuspecting Jean Lundegaard (Kristin Rudrud), her vulnerable adolescent son Scotty (Tony Denman), her wealthy father Wade (a delightfully bombastic Harve Presnell), and the other poor slobs unwittingly caught up in car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's plot to get money out of Wade by hiring two thugs to kidnap wife Jean and hold her for ransom, not factoring in the kidnappers' lack of both patience and anger management skills. Nobody plays losers like William H. Macy, and he sure deserved his Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing Jerry, who ought to have his picture in the dictionary next to the word "inept." Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare are letter-perfect as the loose-cannon wife-snatchers; if Buscemi isn't our generation's Peter Lorre, I don't know who is. But the heart and soul of FARGO is Frances McDormand, who truly earned her Best Actress Oscar here. Looking a bit like a young brunette Carol Burnett, McDormand is beyond superb as Marge Gunderson, the pregnant sheriff (my husband always liked the fact that FARGO doesn't include the nigh-obligatory scene of The Pregnant Heroine Suddenly Going Into Labor At The Worst Possible Time) who runs circles around the bad guys *and* her own well-meaning police force. Courteous and smart, down-to-earth yet slick, her luminous blue-green eyes never missing a thing, McDormand's Marge comes off as a warm Minnesota (is that an oxymoron? :-) female hybrid of Joe Friday and Lt. Columbo (I mean Columbo's stealth smarts, not his sloppiness :-). If you love FARGO, you owe it to yourself to own the deluxe DVD, chock full of way-cool extras too nifty and numerous to go into here -- oh, yah! :-)