A freezing fable of stupidity

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2005)

Fargo: ***.5*
Fargo is a strange little movie. It is, in my opinion, the Cohen Brothers best film. It deals with a very serious subject, yet somehow it does so without taking itself overly serious. There is a very realistic quality to be found here- The subject matter is dark, yet there is a crack of light shining through always. The conversations are spot on with how they would probably be spoken in real life.
McDormands character, the pregnant Marge, is the persistent pursuer but she is not obsessive like so many other movie clichéd 'good guys' are when it comes to catching their adversary. She is involved, but remains detached, just as 95% of real cops will be. You see it clearest in the conversations she has with her fellow officers; husband, and just about everyone else she speaks to. You really feel that she is, as her character says during an interview, just doing her job. This realism is not just present in Marge, but in every character. None are over the top, though the accents are probably slightly exaggerated.
Jerry and his cronies are stupid. We never really find out Jerry's original troubles, but we are front row center for the idiocy that follows. There are no super intelligent characters which you find in many other crime dramas. There is only those who have some wits and common sense, and those who are helplessly daft.
Personally, I loved this movie. It's quirky; it's real; it's charming; and its just plain fun (though bordering on the edge of painful) to watch this freezing fable of stupidity unfold. I did however feel that the ending was a little rushed, but this is not really a bad thing. I felt that the scene of Marge with her friend Mike in the city could have been removed, and that time could have gone to filling out the ending a little more. All in all, this nitpick is rather insignificant, and does little, if nothing at all to distract from the quality of the movie.
I wanted to give this movie a 10, but it is lacking something, i don't know what, which is preventing me from giving it so. I also feel that it deserves more than a nine: 9.5/10