Fargo Reviews
Top CriticFargo is a strikingly mature, uniqueentertainment that plays on many levels ... all satisfying.
The Coens remain effortlessly ahead of the American field.
Gunderson (Frances McDormand) [is] the most endearing, hilarious and wholly feminine heroine since Thelma or Louise.
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Chief Gunderson was created by the Coens specifically for Frances McDormand ... and they've been rewarded by a brilliant and unblinking comic performance.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It's easy to admire what the Coens are trying to do in Fargo, but more difficult to actually like the film.
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| Original Score: 3/4
All attitude and low aptitude. Its function is to italicize the Coens' giddy contempt toward people who talk and think Minnesotan.
| Original Score: 2/5
With Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen return to the glory days of 1987 and Raising Arizona.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A crime gem that is darkly funny even when it's chilling -- and certain to become a classic.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Funny without really trying to be, and it proves conclusively that fact is stranger than fiction.
Has a murder mystery, a heist gone wrong, tragedy, comedy, and well flushed out characters that are both simple and complex at the same time.
Works like a charm. A really weird charm, that is.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
The Coens are at their clever best with this snowbound film noir.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
Whether these characters are lovable or detestable, they're lovable or detestable in a TV way -- defined by a minimal set of traits that are endlessly reiterated and incapable of expansion or alteration, a fixed loop.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The danger in portraying characters you consider significantly less interesting than yourself is that too much superiority and not enough affection can lead to a fatal snottiness.
Kidnapping, larceny and murder have seldom been funnier than in Fargo.
Like every other critic I'm aware of, I loved this movie.
To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them and made a movie that is completely original, and as familiar as an old shoe.
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| Original Score: 4/4
This mordant, macabre look at the American obsession with fast food, television and murder is icily funny.
A nifty bit of nastiness from two of our most dependably provocative filmmakers.
| Original Score: 3/4
The hot news about Joel and Ethan Coen is that they have made a tolerable film.
The joy of Fargo is that everything that goes wrong does so in a perfectly realized universe of icebound Minnesotan understatement, a landscape so muffled by snow and Scandinavian-bred, low-affect courtesy that even murderous passion comes out goofy.
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| Original Score: A
