Fargo

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent, Funny, Disturbing Movie
Review: I put Fargo up there with the best. The Coens are young and productive, so it will be interesting to see what they come up with in their careers. They'll have a hard time topping Fargo. Some things I like about it...
--The way they mix violence with humor (not just gross-out easy laughs). Buscemi's reaction to Stormare shooting the cop is funny in a twisted way... but Stormare going after the young couple immediately after is scary and unsettling. This one scene sets the tone of the whole movie.
--Buscemi's reaction to Presnell's refusal to deal is funny...but Buscemi's reaction to being shot is also funny, and is also scary.
--Marge Gunderson feeling nauseated when she sees the mess at the crime scene...and it's just morning sickness. This brief moment really establishes her character.
--Marge Gunderson's relationship with her husband is really endearing, and is a thread that runs throughout the movie. It gives the movie a lot more humanity that most Coen films have.
--And Bill Macy; his character is so earnest and so out of his depth.
Fargo is a movie that stands up to repeated watching.
The DVD transfer is first-rate

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This movie is easily one of the best movies of the nineties. From the awesome acting and nifty script to the soundtrack and cinematography...It's a movie you can see again and again...If you haven't seen it, see it...You'll thank me...or better yet thank the Coen brothers

Rating:
Summary: Funny as hell
Review: I don't know if this is the best movie the Coen brothers have made, but it has to be one of them. I think everybody will come away from this movie with different perceptions. Like all great art, you'll either love it or hate it.

While I doubt they had "one single message" in mind while making it, the general boredom, desperation and absurdity of every possible event in life leaks heavily from every scene of this movie. The characters are sketchy cretins who we can feel very little sympathy with, except the leading lady sheriff, and even she can get annoying with that accent. The plot isn't even really that important, any more than understanding logically how a car accident happened while you're watching it occur. The mood is what makes this film. Steve Buscemi and his really creepy partner buy into this weak little goofball's scheme to kidnap his wife to get money from her stingy father (the only figure in the film who seems to have some emotion along with the sherrif). Needless to say, it doesn't go to well, and call me jaded, but I found all the gruesomely violent scenes cause for chuckling. When a cop pulls Buscemi and his sociopathic companion over, the Coen brothers refuse the normal "outs" in the typical the-criminals-are-caught film situation:somehow the cop doesn't notice, you think he does but he doesn't, etc. No. He just gets shot in the head. And the kids driving by who witness Buscemi trying to hide the cop's body are simply run down and shot too. No commercial breaks, no outs. Stark realism only for the really real.

The world the Coen brothers create is one of dead greed and disconnection with barely a glimmer of hope, and with this description it seems odd that others find this so amusing, but it is. Even though we get attached to Buscemi's scumbag character in a weird way, there is tremendous hilarity in him being shoved down a wood chipper by his quiet buddy when the two have a minor disagreement over how to split their ill gotten funds. This is an incredible movie, but if your taste in movies is standard (another word for limited), don't watch it and get all high and mighty about the violence.