The Coen Brothers' best film (and that's saying a lot!)

Rating: 10/10 (15 June 2001)

This review contains potential spoilers, but nothing major.
The one-line summary above was hard to write; the brothers Coen, always as a team, consistently deliver solid and usually masterful films with their beautiful visual style and amazingly realistic dialogue. Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing are very closely behind this as their best production. However, Fargo's mix of quiet, intellectual comedy and hard-hitting crime thriller is really amazing. The film can be compared to their debut, the 80's thriller "Blood Simple", only with a slightly lighter tone and less disturbing environment; both involve a husband/wife heist gone wrong, only in Fargo it comes together perfectly.
The acting leaves nothing to be desired. Put simply, they are up there with the best of the 90's; Steve Buscemi is awesome as the constantly-cursing smart guy behind the scheme; William H. Macy, a loser in just about every role he plays, delivers here in his best performance; and Frances McDormand is absolutely incredible as the pregnant cop on the trail of the kidnappers.
Fargo has many classic scenes. In one of the most intense sequences ever filmed, Buscemi's character drags a dead cop off the highway as an onlooker drives by to witness the action. Afterwards, he is hunted down by the other kidnapper and shot to death in the dead cold snow. To see two innocent people killed by a hardened criminal is not only chilling, it's downright disturbing. Many other great scenes precede and follow this one. To list them all would be futile; every scene is perfection. Fargo is a masterpiece and MUST be seen by any serious film buff, and most definitely by any Coen Brothers fan. "A+"