Review of Fargo (1996) by Tim S — 01 May 2012

You'd be hard-pressed to find a film fan who doesn't love Fargo. It's one of those perfect movies that seemed to come along at just the right time and nearly outperformed every other film released at the time on entertainment value alone.

People from North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are bound to tell you how accurate the film's representation of the northern areas of the country, their frigid environments, and the folks who dwell in those areas are.

They'd tell you that the Coen brothers nailed it, as far as that goes. The rest of us would go on to say that Fargo is a darkly comic, noirish thriller with more story and richer characters than you could ever hope for.

I'd be among that latter group of people. A simple plot about a kidnapping gone wrong and the police officer who is hot on the trail of the perpetrators works great on the surface, but it's really the story about these characters and their lives more so than the plot itself.

Some of the Coens' other films may have garnered a bit more spotlight in the intervening years (especially The Big Lebowski), but it's because Fargo was so widely-well received and accepted at the time of its release rather than later on like a lot of Coen brothers' films.

All of their work is important, of course, but Fargo is probably their most accessible and most wide reaching work. And for that, it's a very important film that deserves all of the accolades that it received and all of the fans that it garnered.