Solid, but overhyped

Rating: Null/10 (7 December 2003)

"Fargo" came out in 1996. I saw it for the first time in November of 2003. Those seven-odd years during which the film was hyped to death as one of the best movies ever caused a noticeable ascension in my expectations. And unfortunately, as we all know, the more a film is touted before you see it, the more likely it is to disappoint. Such was probably the case here.
Here are a couple of main items that prevented me from liking it as much as the general American public:
1. The plot of the film was solid, but I thought that it was a bit underdeveloped. The film's runtime was just over an hour and a half, which may not seem too short, but in this case forced the main conflict to resolve itself a tad quickly. In doing so, the writers (the Coen Brothers) failed to progress it to a truly noticeable climax or capture the type of characterization that is necessary in order for this sort of "comic crime-caper" to work.
2. To be fair, though, the characters were very cleverly created, and very well cast (as is the case in most Coen Brothers movies). However, only Jerry Lundegaard's character (played by William H. Macy) is given enough screentime to truly develop. His massive amount of screentime allows the audience to eventually notice his visible inner conflict and come to grips with him as the sort of desperate, fidgety person that he is. Frances McDormand, who won an Oscar for her role as Marge Gunderson, on the other hand, seems to just appear on the screen at one point and then disappear a little later. She just really doesn't bring a whole lot to the table in terms of the linear plot, as she seems to go off more on tangents and rely on a thick Canadian-esque accent (one that loses its novelty very quickly) for laughs more than anything else. Her time on screen was apparently sufficient enough to warrant her nomination in the category of "Best Actress" and not "Best Supporting Actress," but, in my opinion, it wasn't enough to present her for much more than surface value. Although McDormand played the part as well as anyone could have, her character was weakly written and should not have won her a nomination, let alone an Academy Award.
All in all, "Fargo" is simply a good, watchable movie that was probably, in my case, just a victim of self-imposed over-scrutiny caused by more than half a decade of hype. But I have the feeling that even if I had seen it when it first came out, I wouldn't be placing it in any upper-echelon categories anyway. On a scale of 1-to-5, I'd give this one about 3.5.