Fargo

This is optional to read before my review.  Hopefully I will be posting more frequently because on November 24th (or Thanksgiving) was my birthday, and I received a lot of movies as presents through family and gift cards, and I got lots of movies on Black Friday very inexpensively so the rate of reviews might increase.

Joel and Ethan Coen are two of the best modern-day directors in the film business.  Their filmography is unbelievably successful, with modern-day classics including No Country for Old Men, the Big Lebowski, and their most overlooked film, a Serious Man.  Although, there is no argument that Fargo is among their best.  The humor is dark but hilarious, the direction is superb, and this is one that should not be missed.

In Fargo, North Dakota, Jerry Lundegard (William H. Macy) goes through financial problems and arranges a rendezvous with two men (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife so the father-in-law can pay the ransom off as both sides earn the profit.  After the kidnapping, everything goes downhill and what was supposed to be innocently executed turns into a bloodshed of problems, literally.  After seeing the murders on TV, pregnant sheriff Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand, who gives a career-defining performance) does it in her jurisdiction to track who caused the three murders.

This film has too much to say about.  Never have the Coen brothers done a film so classy, so entertaining, and so gruesome - even to the levels of Tarantino standards.  This is some of the best character development ever done in a 90s film (runner-up to Pulp Fiction).  All four characters that are followed (Macy's, Buscemi's and Sotrmare's, and McDormand's) are absolutely magnificent.  Their personalities are all well thought out and stand out individually.

What steals the show, however, is the screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen.  Their writing is divine, being some of the most creative I have ever seen on screen.  What makes this film so terrific as well is that this film could easily be a two to two-and-a-half hour film, but the Coen's played sharp and made it a well-worth it hour and a half.

If I haven't said it enough, this film is fantastic.  There are few flaws to this film and it easily stands out as one of the best of the 90s, especially when it was released.  It is entertaining throughout and never ceases to lose my attention.  Fargo easily receives a 4/4.