Fargo (1996)
Directed by Joel Coen
Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!
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25 films that influenced Fargo
What critics say influenced Fargo
But even beyond the regional colloquialisms and the broad accents, which most of us in the Cities are quick to claim are more the province of the outstate crowd, is another smartly constructed, wickedly executed black comedy about the inherent weirdness of people, a satire reflecting how humanity's grand, inevitably failed gestures (represented here by cinematographer Roger Deakins's Lawrence of Arabia -pinching opening shots and composer Carter Burwell's insistently, hilariously ethnic dirges) are no match for mankind's pettiness and stupidity.
But even beyond the regional colloquialisms and the broad accents, which most of us in the Twin Cities are quick to claim are more the province of the outstate crowd, is another smartly constructed, wickedly executed black comedy about the inherent weirdness of people, a satire reflecting how humanity's grand, inevitably failed gestures (represented here by cinematographer Roger Deakins's Lawrence of Arabia-pinching opening shots and composer Carter Burwell's insistently, hilariously ethnic dirges) are no match for mankind's pettiness and stupidity.
And throughout the hypnotized Midwestern atmosphere of this movie-picture a cross between Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead"-Frances McDormand enjoys the comedic role of her career.
In shooting the murder of Richard Crenna’s Edmund, Lawrence Kasdan cut away from the actual bludgeoning just as Tay Garnett did in The Postman Always Rings Twice .
O tema do rapto foi também inspirado por High and Low , obra de Kurosawa admirada por Joel.
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If Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood (1967), based on Capote's nonfiction novel, is an unusually well-respected example of the genre, more often, true crime is trashed for being voyeuristic and sensationalistic, by definition.
Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 novel To Have and Have Not had already been made into an excellent 1944 feature directed by Howard Hawks and offering the immortal first pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?
The joke is not that Jerry is Machiavellian (like Kurt Russell in Used Cars ), but that he’s such a worm even when he’s pulling a fast one.
As far back as the 1970s, there had been cult curios such as Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude – about a romance between a man in his early twenties and a woman nearing her eighties – and Terrence Malik’s lovers-on-the-lam masterpiece Badlands .
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Under pressure, she's more like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (1971).
Before showing the film, I spoke for a few minutes as follows: As usual, I want to take a quick look back at last week’s film, Body Heat before saying a few words about Fargo by Joel and Ethan Coen, the movie we’re going to see tonight.