Declines in quality on repeat viewing

Rating: 5/10 (2 December 2006)

Completely honest viewpoint... I first saw this film in a theater during its initial theatrical run in 1996. A friend picked it out, as I had never heard of it until then. We sat through it, then on the way out, I said to him, "Well, that was weird." He looked at me and laughed, saying, "I was just going to say that." We then promptly forgot about it and started talking about someone else. It seemed like it would have done well as an extended episode of some bizarre TV series along the lines of "Twin Peaks," etc. Something that you would watch once, and then next week, something different would happen with the same characters. But as a self-contained film, well, it's not enough of a story, not enough of a film. The months later, it was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture. On hearing that, I thought, "Wow, Hollywood really liked it." I have to admit I was rooting for Brenda Blethyn to win the Oscar for "Secrets and Lies" as I thought hers was the best performance of the year. So I was let down when Frances McDormand won, not that her performance wasn't award-worthy, just that the wrong person won that year. Thinking I had missed something profound about "Fargo," I rented the DVD when it came out, I think in 2003. This time I could hardly stomach the violence in it. I wisely turned it off before one particularly gruesome scene happened. I don't see any point in sitting through it again. I was ready to write off the Coen brothers as filmmakers, until I rented "The Man Who Wasn't There," which was brilliant. Sorry, but that's just my honest opinion about "Fargo."