Fargo (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Fargo (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Ja, dat vas a goot vun!
Summary: 5 Stars
An American dialect not well known to most of us helps to raise this movie from the level of just another police drama almost to the definition of a new genre of film. Could you call it a "comedy-kill"?
William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, a Minneapolis car salesman, hires Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare), two thugs who are neither too smart nor too competent, to abduct his wife for ransom so he can split the loot (supplied by her father, Harve Presnell) with the two miscreants. Lundegaard's nefarious scheme leads ultimately to six murders before the case is solved by policewoman Marge Gunderson (played by Frances McDormand) who displays a good instinct as a detective -- and a seven-month pregnancy which she hauls around gamely, even to walking on heavy snow in the frozen Minnesota countryside.
The north country, jaw-breaking accent used by most of those in the movie reminded me of Mr. Tudball, the Swedish office manager on the old Carol Burnett Show. I expected a character to suddenly say, "Tehuda, tehuda, tehuda!" as Tudball often did.
The accent is genuine, however. I served in the U.S. Army with a number of boys from North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and that's how people talk up there. There is something refreshingly funny in the way the actors often say something that sounds so old-country weird to the ears of most of us, while never cracking a smile or letting on that there is anything to laugh about.
I also liked the movie because it had no ravishing girls or pretty boys in it -- just common, ordinary folks going about their daily business. The domestic scenes with Marge Gunderson and her husband -- also a police officer -- are matter-of-fact and lacking any of the wisecracks or putdowns so common in movies nowadays.
If you want to see a movie that's different, in ways that have to be seen and, especially, HEARD, to be believed, rent or buy "Fargo."
Movie Review: More or Less Perfect
Summary: 5 Stars
Jerry Lundegaard is a small time car salesman with a cash flow problem. The good news is that his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrud) has a very rich father (Harve Presnell). The bad news is that said father has Jerry down as a useless sort of loser and is determined to make sure he doesn't see a penny of it. So Jerry has the bright idea to make some money by hiring a couple of crooks (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife with a view to taking a substantial cut from the large ransom father-in-law will pay. Said crooks screw up however and what was planned as a kidnap turns into a messy multiple homicide. At which point enter our detective, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), sharp as a razor and heavily pregnant.
C. K. Chesterton liked to complain of the tendency of literature and other arts to portray evil as sexy and exciting, goodness as a bit boring and dry and to commend the artistic project of reversing that same trend. This movie is perhaps the most brilliant realisation there is of that Chestertonian ambition. There is nothing to like admire or want to emulate about the spineless loser Lundegaard or about squalid little criminal nobodies portrayed by Buscemi and Stormare. But, in the characters of Gunderson and her small time artist husband, the Coens offer up a beautiful and infinitely engaging but utterly unsentimental and credible picture of what an altogether splendid and, yes, downright cool thing simple plain old human goodness can be.
There really is nothing to fault in this film which is pretty well frame-by-frame perfect from start to finish. It's the Coen bothers best film which makes it one of the best films around by anyone. It's deep. It's pacey and exciting. In places it's hilariously funny. The acting, writing and camerawork are all consistently astonishing. Emphatically a film to see and see again.
Movie Review: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
Summary: 5 Stars
FARGO is a modern classic of cinema. Period. One of the things that I enjoy most about the Coen brothers' movies is that they both understand their art form: movies are primarily visual works of art. Many films forget this fact. While the plot of FARGO is, in many ways, simple and somewhat predictable, the cinematography is amazing. The blanket white landscapes that the Coen brothers paint gives the film the elegance of a black & white film with the beauty of a work in color. The white makes the colors "pop" on the screen.
FARGO introduces us to another one of William H. Macy's masterful performances. He plays the perfect Everyman, someone who is absolutely despicable and, yet, manages to win our sympathy. It is perfect because we see a glimmer of something in his sad existence that reminds us of our own. He has been pushed around all of his life and one gets the feeling that the world would little remember him if he just fell off the face of the earth. In a surprising act of agency, he hatches a scheme to accomplish two goals: to gouge his father-in-law for a lot of money (a man whom he has never earned respect) and to gain the necessary funds to fuel a business plan of his own. The plot is simple: hire two men to kidnap his wife, collect the ransom money from his father-in-law, and give the henchman a fraction of the ransom in exchange for his wife back. But in FARGO, as in life, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. One thing after another goes wrong and the body count rises.
In the end, FARGO is about following normal, everyday characters (the type William H. Macy was born to play) and placing them in ordinary (yet, at the same time, extraordinary) circumstances and seeing how the haphazardness of life plays with them. Watch this film. It is unforgettable.
Movie Review: A is for acting.
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't believe how many reviewers neglected the fact that part of the genius of this movie is the way it is passed off as a true story. Even the rumor that the cop was really a man just fuels the belief, although it is pure fiction. The acting is great all around, but Macy steals the show as the complex, pathetic Lundegaard, a spineless, wimpy guy who married the overbearing, egotistical boss's ditzy, innocent daughter. We never really find out why Jerry needs the money, although schemes involving a parking lot investment, insurance fraud, and a phony kidnapping are all backfiring as the plot unfolds. Perhaps he simply needs the money from the kidnapping and/or the investment to cover the auto insurance fraud screw-up when they call his loan back. It is never really explained, and to good effect. The impetus for the capers is irrelevant.
Macy's lies (very realistic for a used car salesman), private temper tantrums and loss of control, and lack of authority over his father in-law are perfectly played. The police interview scene in his office with Frances McDormand is pure genius, from the acting to the writing to the filming. This is movie making artistry.
Buscemi and Stormare are perfect as the not-quite-competent thieves hired for the project, with Stormare a cold-blooded and obvious sociopath and Buscemi an almost likeable lost soul.
This is a fairly realistic movie, other than the scene where Stormare fires a single perfect shot at over 100 feet into the back of a fleeing crime witness, who is running in deep snow and illuminated only by car headlights. It's nice to actually see a character in serious pain after getting shot, with lasting wounds, such as Buscemi's Carl Showalter suffers.
Not for the faint of heart, I recommend this movie 100%.
Movie Review: Yah ...
Summary: 5 Stars
I give this movie 4 stars and a half, or 8,5/10 points. This movie is among the Best 100 American movies of all times (filmsite.org, position 84 to be more precise), and it is among the 1000 Best Movies on DVD by Peter Travers. Its critical and box-office success also came with seven Academy Awards nominations, including Best Supporting Actor (William H. Macy), Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins, The Shawshank Redemption), Best Director (Joel Coen), Best Film Editing (alias Roderick Jaynes, actually the Coens), and Best Picture (Ethan Coen). The film's two well-deserved Oscars were for Best Original Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen), and Best Actress (Frances McDormand, Joel Coen's real-life wife).
The movie is rated R for violence and this Special Edition comes with a great new documentary "Minnesota Nice", plus interview with the Coen Brothers and McDormand. Also an audio commentary by director of photography Roger A. Deakins. I'd had preferred a commentary by the Coen brothers, but since photography plays a big role on the movie, it is just fine.
The movie is a really good thriller based on a "true" story. There are dark humour scenes here and there, like when the kidnapped wife tries to run away, or the interview McDormand has with two [...]. People from Minesotta took the movie as insulting, since their peculiar accent is perfectly well imitated, but that was just trying to be as close as the reality as possible. I find the character of McDormand really funny, saying, overall, about 100 stupid "Yah". The characters of Buscemi and Presnell are just terrific as well, and the only one I did not like is the wife. I still can't figure out why she needs to be so freaking nervous all the time.
Overall, a great movie, not to be missed, that should be in every DVD collection.