Great flick with a too abrupt ending

Rating: 9/10 (24 November 2005)

What more can be said after 487 viewer comments? For #488, all I will say is that, after watching this three times, Fargo is a fine piece of cinema, with an emphasis on a minimalist approach to story-telling and without much in the way of theatrics. The setting is bleak, the dialog is mostly direct and to-the-point, and the characters are well-drawn, what few main characters there are. I thought Steve Buscemi was wonderful as the villain in a humorously sick way. The one negative comment I have is that I feel the movie ends much too abruptly: too many loose threads left hanging. I thought the viewer was entitled to know a little bit more about why Jerry (William H. Macy) would go to such outlandish lengths to raise money as to stage his own wife's kidnapping. The fact that he "owed money" or "got in over his head" wasn't quite enough for me as an explanation since I had kept asking myself during the course of this escapade, "Why? Exactly why is he doing this?" We never really find out except in the most vague terms. All in all, probably my favorite Coen Brothers film.