Hits and misses. (Minor spoilers)

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2001)

To me, the success of a film is largely depending on to what extent it kept me glued to the screen. Whenever I decide to watch 'just a couple of minutes' while gobbling down a late night snack, and end up watching the whole movie because it is able to grab me by the neck and never lets go, someone has done something right.
So Fargo was a very strange experience. It begins very well, with actors giving straight A performances, doing a tremendous job in establishing their characters. Their mannerisms, looks, and voices make these well-written characters three dimensional and fun to watch.
The story premise is promising. Loser of the year Macey needs money and his father-in-law is loaded, but because he want to keep his 'dignity', he just decides to hire a duo of loonies to kidnap his wife and split the ransom, to be coughed up by daddy.
Needless to say, "Things Go Wrong", to quote a minor Chris Isaak song. Blood is shed and, eventually, the bodies just keep piling up.
Investigating all this, is a pregnant and merry sheriff, who loves her Bob Ross-wannabe hubby and just can't figure out why, on such a lovely day, people would want to kill one another over some money.
But, keeping Chris Isaak in mind, it never became the wonderful movie I expected it to be.
It's a rather meandering movie, and between the many moments of brilliance, there's also a lot of boring stuff, many moments that enables one to visit the john or get another beer without missing anything interesting or crucial. Mind you, I'm not talking about 'slow scenes'. 'Slow' and 'boring' are, as we all know, two completely different things. Sometimes it's necessary to walk slowly to admire the view, to catch the details or to be soaked up by the atmosphere ("Lost Highway"; "Barry Lyndon"). That's good. But when you find yourself in a small room with no windows and start to walk slowly around in circles ("Eyes Wide Shut"), that's when restlessness and boredom start to kick in. This film contains a lot of stuff that could and should have been cut out. For example, the subplot involving the Mike Yanagita character. According to the charming and talented actress Frances McDormand, who did an interview on Dutch television, this scenes were included to show that even her loveable character Marge has her dark side, as she doesn't know how to behave during the date with this old school buddy of hers. Ms. McDormand ended her explanation with the rhetorical question "[Joel en Ethan Coen] are great writers, aren't they?"
Well, a truly great writer would have been able to make that point about Marge within the main story itself, instead of having to resort to an additional storyline that sticks out like a sore thumb and momentarily halts the movie.
So watching this movie is weird for me. I own it on video and whenever I put it on to watch 'just a couple of minutes', my fingers keep starting to move to the stop button. Every time I'm about to push it, something brilliant happens on the screen and I let go of the remote, only to find my fingers going towards it again a couple of minutes later.
*** out of ****