This is a strange film. Most of the time, when it comes to films that are reality based, I get tired of them real fast. Take a film like Affliction. That film was about an alcoholic father and the abuse of his sons. It got real old real fast because there was just too much reality in there. And it didn't manage to mesh the reality with even a modicum of entertainment. Fargo is different. This is a very serious film with a whole slew of funny moments. I don't think I have laughed this hard in a film when people weren't doing anything particularly funny. But when a guy with a shovel in his hand tells you than there are clouds coming in over the horizon, and you find that gut-splittingly funny, then you are in for a special film. Fargo is that film.

But besides the hilarity, what makes this film work is the breakthrough performance of William H. Macy. Macy plays Jerry Lundergard the only way he should be played. Lundergard is a troubled man. He is in some financial difficulty and he has rich relatives that wouldn't give him any money for any reason. They don't particularly like him. Lundergard is a normal man. He comes from a small town and he ends up hatching a big scheme to get the money. He will have his wife kidnapped and then set up a ransom for her that will go to him. His wife won't be harmed and then he can pay off his financial debt. So he hires a couple of idiots, violent idiots, but idiots nonetheless. Of course this being a crime movie, and a Coen crime movie at that, everything is going to go wrong. And it does.

Macy captures the true feel of what it would be like to be in Lundergard's position. He is nervous. He is nervous because he is so inept at crime that he hasn't even bothered to get the kidnappers phone numbers and he tried to supply them with a car by smudging some numbers when sending in a fax to GM. In one of the best scenes in the film, what starts out as a friendly meeting between Marge, the police detective, and Jerry turns into disaster for Jerry. He can't even lie well enough to a police officer who really isn't questioning him about the crime, just the possibility that the crooks stole a car from his lot. Now I'm no expert in kidnapping, but wouldn't it have been better for him to just say that he had a car stolen from the lot? But he can't even figure that out properly.

Marge is played by Academy Award winner Frances McDormand. She is from the small town of Fargo, she is pregnant and she has trouble starting her car in the morning. But she is also a gifted police officer. Upon investigating the scene of the first crime, she figures it out with common sense and logic. " I don't think I agree with some of your police work there..." she tells the other officer that seems to have it all backwards. When she gets to the big city, the first thing she does is look for a buffet, then she goes onto trying to solve a crime. She still has her priorities straight.

The two kidnappers are played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare. Buscemi is Showalter and Stormare is Grimsrud and they couldn't be more opposite. Buscemi is "funny looking" and a nervous, talkative fellow while Stormare is a quiet, almost dumb looking dork. But they are ruthlessly violent and quick to pull the trigger. Buscemi provides the film with some of the bigger laughs as his character is always described as being funny looking by the locals.

The Coens have made some movies that were considered good, although not my taste ( Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink ) but Fargo is a step above most other films. It is smarter than any film should be and it is honest and deceptively funny. If something is supposed to go wrong then it does. In most films, when a crime is committed, the only reason it is solved and the good guys win is because that is the way scripts are written. The good guys have to win because that is the formula for a film. But in Fargo, everything that happens does so because there are reasons for it and reasons given for it. If Marge is going to figure out the crime, she does so because she has done her homework and found out where the bad guys are. The script doesn't let her down.

Fargo was one of the best films to come out of 1996 and it sure as hell was much better than English Patient. I don't think we are meant to figure out the academy though. One year it gives out best picture to a worthy film like Titanic and overlooks unworthy opponents like L.A. Confidential and then other years it gives best picture to crap like Shakespeare In Love and English Patient overlooking films like Saving Private Ryan and Fargo. Fargo is one of the most original films ever made and it is a perfect one to watch when you are tired of the formula that Hollywood releases time and time again.

10 out of 10