Unmissable.

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2008)

Another commentator has described this movie as one he never wants to end. And you can't say fairer than that. It slyly draws you in with its understated style, and acting that is so perfectly believable, you become fully absorbed in the details.
Whoever dreamed-up the idea of a small-town heavily-pregnant female police officer turning detective and unravelling a hideously brutal series of crimes, that culminate in a confrontation with a wood-chipping machine? It's the sort of weirdness that happens in real life rather than the all-too-often implausible movies.
We watch a succession of scenes that trail each other like the sets from an opera. Small-town American life in winter in captured with a wonderful phlegmatic simplicity. People just get about their business, whilst meanwhile something monstrous is unfolding.
William Macy plays the husband who hires a couple of ruthless goons to stage his wife's kidnapping as an extortion plot. But neither have the wit or wisdom to do it right. Steve Buscemi & Peter Stormare play those goons.
Frances McDormand is the WPC who is landed with the job of finding out what's happened. She is neither a graceful nor a pretty woman, and proves once more that females don't need the face and figure of Pamela Anderson to make truly deserving contributions to cinema. Well done, the Coens, for realising this. The little dalliances between herself and her artist husband are touching and funny, and one wonders why other couples cannot be so mutually respectful and accommodating in real life.
The sub-plots are supported by funky theme music that segues each along at an unhurried pace, gradually wandering into weirdness, and contrasting their loving normality to the final nightmarish denouement.
And she tries to make sense of it all in her simple small-town way. It's such a nice sunny day after all. And just for some money...
It's hard to tire of this movie. For all its black humour, it's a personal pleasurable experience. I really ought to give it 10.
Watch it yourselves if you doubt me. Or read the other comments.