Fargo

For me, Fargo hits all the beats it needs to hit. It’s got a fine balance of comedy and drama, it has some amazing characters, balanced well with the cinematography, heck, it was even shot in my home state. But, at the same time, it doesn’t stick with me the way I feel it should.

I’ll start off with what I liked. For one, the cinematography was outstanding, the use of the white background was used extremely well to highlight or disguise certain elements of the story. This is used best in the gory scenes, as the red truly pops out in the environment, even from long distance wide shots (which are often used). Of course, the visuals of a film can’t completely save it, this is backed up by the excellent characters. Each character is unique, and although the plot seems to shift between around 3 main story lines, it does this with ease. The narrative focus is very strong, and it doesn’t seem to drift from what needs to be told, however, that doesn’t mean the movie goes without its faults.

My biggest complaint with the movie comes down to a mix between issues with the pacing and quite a few cliche elements. As mentioned, I very much appreciated the balance of comedy and dramatic moments the film has. However, it’s the transition between the two that causes my issue. The movie handles each aspect incredibly well, and I almost feel it would actually better off if it didn’t try to merge the two. As the comedy often takes the form of character comedy, it’s a very difficult issue of mine to put to words, but put simply, the actions of the characters become inconsistent with this shift in tone. Although I loved the character, Steve Buscemi had very inconsistent moments. I understand that the rising tensions of the film often causes characters to act differently, but especially with him, although I understood the character themselves, their actions were never as clear as they should be. This leads me to my next point, which is the sometimes cliche use of violence. I didn’t have an issue with the gore the Coen Brothers included (wood chipper), but I thought that many of the action scenes themselves were bland. Usually, it was the aftermath of the action scenes that truly had me excited.

Overall, I know I just dumped on that movie a bit, but the truth is, I had a good time with Fargo. It has its issues with pacing, but overall, it handles a lot of things very well, only missing a step in a few others. 8.9/10