Okay, but what was the fuss all about? Accents??

Rating: 7/10 (6 September 2004)

I saw this film in 2004, long after the Oscar buzz had died down. I suppose it's a victim of its own hype. I enjoyed the film, but it seemed somehow smaller than I expected. Frances McDormand's Oscar-winning performance seems so trivial, seen through the perspective of eight years. The story is okay, though I again wonder about the Oscar the Coens received. (The 1996 Oscars were a somewhat weak field.) I spent most of the movie wondering if people in Minnesota and the Dakotas really talk that way, or is "Fargo" as much a travesty of regional accents as most "southern" movies are? Overall, the whole film was a nicely filmed, tight little story with apparently overdone regional ironies.