The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This film is well threaded and not many flaws are showing. Colourful characters fill the story that goes from a bad idea to worse. Greed and psychopathy do not mix well. Spellbinding!

Having seen this film some years ago I used to think it was really good. I watched it again last night, and decided it was actually pretty messy and nasty. Nearly all the characters, with Marge and the bit parts excepted, are unusually unpleasant. The Coens seem not to have enjoyed growing up in Scandinavian America, and have taken revenge on the place. Is it populated almost entirely by dolts, scammers, thugs, bullies, hookers, wimps and so on ? According to the extra feature "Minnesota Nice" there is an underlying feeling that "polite cultures are the most repressed and therefore the most violent". The Coens put it that way, in any case. In other respects the whole set-up reminded me a little of Blue Velvet country, ten years earlier.The film kicks off with three unplanned killings of innocent people, and then adds to these with three or four more. It would spoil things were I to list them. Marge, who is a pregnant policewoman, then forces a solution to what is going on and arrests the surviving guilty party. She tells him it's a beautiful day. It isn't in fact, since it's foggy and snowy. She ends up in bed with her signally lumpy husband, and tells him he's wonderful. The two of them spend a lot of time stuffing their mouths. There is a curious incident with a mentally disturbed Japanese man. I don't quite know what that's about. The net result is faintly comic, in an ugly sort of way, if you think all the deaths are funny. $1 million, less $80,000, is buried and lost in the snow.

The Second movie directed by Joel Cohen "Fargo", is a story of a terrible husband who intentionally put his wife up for ransom may not have been a true story but it is an entertaining and at times intriguing watch nonetheless. Jerry Lundegaard(Played by William Macy) is a poverty stricken car salesman who devised a plan to have his wife Jean Lundegaard, (played by Kristin Rudrüd)kidnapped and held for a million dollar ransom to make a quick buck from his father in law(played by Harvey Presnell). All according to plan until the "funny looking" thugs hired by Jerry (played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) out of sheer incompetence, murder a police officer who pulls them over and two ordinary people passing through who where at the wrong place, at the wrong time. The best part of this film has to be how the movie intrigues with each turn of events in the story that only increase the tension between the viewers and the main character jerry, as his whole plan comes crashing down on him especially when he learns that his ransom will have to be raised to 80,000 to compensate for the unnecessary deaths. Not only that but he also has to worry about the intrusive police officer Marge, (played by Frances McDormand) investigating the triple homicide. The only shortcoming of Fargo have to be the simple dialogue, the almost static camera angles and little character growth but overall, Fargo is a stellar movie and well deserving of the cult-appeal it has received following its initial release in 1996.

I'm certain that the main reason for my lowest of low ratings is that I was lead to believe I would be viewing a comedy. Like most films, I heard about Fargo word of mouth and everything I heard was about how funny it was. Laughs they all said. Hilarious I was told...back in '96. So when it came out on pay per view in late '96 or early '97, I attempted to watch it. More than half way through, I had not so much as chuckled. As a matter of fact, I was shocked and depressed. So I turned it off. Never saw the end. Then I had some conversations with my friends/coworkers/colleagues who had raved about it. "Oh you just didn't give it a chance" they all said. "Watch it all the way though" I was told. So here I am 20 + years later with a new open mind, ready to be amused. Prepared for chuckles and belly laughs. And this time, I watched all the way through. What did I discover? Nothing. Still depressing. Still pointless. Still completely, totally, entirely humorless. Not clever. Not interesting. Just depressing. Makes me wonder about the psychology of all those folks who raved about all the humor in this film. Makes me wonder how I would have felt about it had it not been presented as a comedy. As it is, just meh.