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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 2151
Released: September 30, 2003 |
| Our Price: $4.50 |
| Used Price: $3.27 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A persistent, pregnant police chief tries to solve the disappearance of a wife and mother from Fargo.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 11-JAN-2005
Media Type: DVD
Description of Fargo (Special Edition):
Leave it to the wildly inventive Coen brothers (Joel directs, Ethan produces, they both write) to concoct a fiendishly clever kidnap caper that's simultaneously a comedy of errors, a Midwestern satire, a taut suspense thriller, and a violent tale of criminal misfortune. It all begins when a hapless car salesman (played to perfection by William H. Macy) ineptly orchestrates the kidnapping of his own wife. The plan goes horribly awry in the hands of bumbling bad guys Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare (one of them being described by a local girl as "kinda funny lookin'" and "not circumcised"), and the pregnant sheriff of Brainerd, Minnesota, (played exquisitely by Frances McDormand in an Oscar-winning role) is suddenly faced with a case of multiple murders. Her investigation is laced with offbeat observations about life in the rural hinterland of Minnesota and North Dakota, and Fargo embraces its local yokels with affectionate humor. At times shocking and hilarious, Fargo is utterly unique and distinctly American, bearing the unmistakable stamp of its inspired creators. --Jeff Shannon
Fargo (Special Edition) Reviews:
Who said crime was not fun? 
2008-06-16 - Take a sordid crime story, but something really bleak, gross, more than anything you can think of as trashy, disgusting, sickening, etc and entrust the story to the Coen Brothers to make it a comic thriller and you might get some kind of funny, humorous and hilarious film with blood everywhere, victims everywhere, one million dollars playing hooky in some snow landscape, a pregnant sheriff that is loaded to the very brim and is still smiling and going though not running. And mind you they do not miss one detail. Neither the shot through the top of the skull and the blood geyser out of it. Nor the body in the wood chipper with one foot with its sock still on sticking out. Nor the meal of the sheriff: she is obviously expecting quintuplets, even maybe two sets of quintuplets. And the sheriff's husband is a painter: he paints stamps for the post office, I guess among other great projects. You will learn that DLR means Dealer. That's important. And what else? So much that you would get dizzy if I started quoting them all and you would have no surprise. And it is a true story. Crime for the dummies, I guess, crime made easy and pleasurable. A great moment of fun.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
One of the Coens' more cohesive and satisfying works
2008-04-10 - Complain if you will about the accents and the happy-chirpy residents of Fargo and Brainerd, but then put that aside and enjoy the rest of the story.
This is one of the Coen Brothers' better efforts, with a wonderful cast headed by William H. Macy and Frances McDormand. Peter Stormare is frightening as one of the kidnappers, and the always-watchable Steve Buscemi rounds it out.
The storyline is engaging and not nearly as convoluted as the one in The Big Lebowski. It's also impressive that they managed to shoot with so much snow and wind going on. The only film of theirs that may be better than this one is No Country for Old Men.... Or possibly O Brother, where Art Thou? --but I have not seen that one in a while, so more comparisons will have to wait until I re-view it.
Fargo 
2008-04-06 - A story about dim-witted criminals and the cop pursuing them through Minnesota in the dead of winter. That's the gist of the entire story. It was only "OK" in my book. Not a movie I will watch weekly, but good enough to watch again, someday.
I'm a Minnesotan and the accents are so over the top 
2008-03-23 - my title says it all - I'm about halfway through watching this movie, and I'm totally disgusted with the over-the-top MN accents. Those who don't live here probably think this is the way all of us talk. Not!!! And, oh yeah, just because we live in MN doesn't automatically make us dumb. Truly overkill on the stereotyping.
An Uplifting Tale of Kidnapping, Violence and Death
2008-03-20 - A story about a bungled kidnapping that leads to multiple violent deaths and leaves a teenaged boy orphaned seems like an unlikely recipient of adjectives like 'funny', 'wry', 'humane' and 'oddly beautiful'. But that's the impression that this beautifully scenic movie leaves.
So perhaps the best review is to say that Fargo is an upsetter of categories-a film that uses the awful aspects of American life to point out the beautiful ones.
In spite of the resolutely depraved nature of most of the characters, we end up loving the fundamental earthy innocence of Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, the pregnant chief of police in a town that's noted mostly for its statue of Paul Bunyan and the presence of the inevitable Blue Ox Inn. The result is a 'feel good' movie that's about deceit and violence. Go figure.
Not to be missed is the awesome scope of the land of the Northern Plains. You have to watch this in the original format to appreciate how the broad horizontality of the land exposes the weird perversity of human nature. Maybe that's what the Coen brothers had in mind.
Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG: A Novel and New Short Course in Wine,The
