Hey let's laugh at the hicks!

Rating: 3/10 (18 December 2005)

I'll get this out of the way first by saying I usually like/love Coen brothers movies but I can't for the life of me figure out the appeal of this one. They've had a couple misfires with me before, Miller's Crossing and Oh Brother Where Art Thou, but at least those films had hints of humanity. This gore fest drips with condescension at the locals they purport to embrace, turning them into hockey loving pancake eating you betcha caricatures while supposedly telling a true story -though that's debatable- of a botched kidnapping in wintry Minnesota/North Dakota. A great cast is wasted, reduced to running around barfing, bleeding, screwing, shooting, hacking and wood chipping bodies for what? Cheap laughs? You betcha!