The North Dakota setting is icily evocative, the supporting characters perfectly pitched (remember Marge's old flame Mike Yanagita?), while the air of sadness that blankets the film like snow adds genuine profundity.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 14, 2021

Its brilliance [lies] in making the forces of law and order look as interesting and funny as the bad guys.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 10, 2021

McDormand aside, the secret might be the perfect pitch of the black comedy, the two elements in rare harmony.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 9, 2021

The movie stands as a pseudo thesis of the things the Coen Brothers have been interested in all along...

| Mar 9, 2021

The Coen Brothers are among the most able practitioners in America and this film is one of their best attempts to turn a familiar genre -- the True Crime drama -- into something miles away from the ordinary.

| Mar 20, 2018

[Frances] McDormand is excellent and has a lot of fun with her tenacious and competent character, who is dedicated to duty and her sweet, supportive husband.

| Mar 19, 2018

In effect, the Coens have written an action film that disregards the basic principle of the genre: that character is expressed in action.

| Nov 15, 2017

Not only did the Coens return from the brink, but they gave us one of the most memorable (if not the most memorable) characters in modern cinema.

| Apr 9, 2016

Two words. Marge Gunderson.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

The film is a work of brick-by-brick world-building in the service of characters whose ordinariness is just as carefully crafted.

| Jan 19, 2016

Fargo, with its grotesque murders and cheery detectives, is a cold gem that takes us to the far north. Its seemingly pitiless light opens up the realms of darkness concealed beneath that world of white.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 21, 2014

A small, supremely satisfying film. Heck and you betcha, it is.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 21, 2014

A few scenes go around in circles, as if snow-blind, and the humor may be too inward and contorted for some tastes. But McDormand brings order to the weirdness and warms it up.

| Apr 21, 2014

It's another daring black comedy by one of the most consistently inventive moviemaking teams of the last decade, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 21, 2014

From the camera angles to the set design, everything is calculated to make the viewer feel superior to the cloddish, geeky characters on display.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 21, 2014

In the fascinating Fargo, writer-director Joel and writer-producer Ethan have come up with a film that is either an oddly funny crime drama or an ultra-deadpan comedy, depending on how you look at it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2014

Do you have to be a Minnesotan to really get Fargo?

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 21, 2009

Fargo is a strikingly mature, uniqueentertainment that plays on many levels ... all satisfying.

Full Review | Nov 6, 2007

The Coens remain effortlessly ahead of the American field.

| Jan 26, 2006

Gunderson (Frances McDormand) [is] the most endearing, hilarious and wholly feminine heroine since Thelma or Louise.

| Jan 18, 2002