Fargo

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen.

Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel

The fans of their best work -- "Blood Simple, "Raising Arizona," "Barton Fink" -- now can add Fargo to the list, pushing the Coens to the first rank of contemporary American filmmakers. [8 March 1996, Friday, p.B]

Dallas Observer Arnold Wayne Jones

Fargo is a concert performance--an illuminating amalgam of emotion and thought. It glimpses into the heart of man and unearths a blackly comic nature, hellishly mercurial and selfish, yet strangely innocent. If it weren't so funny, it would be unbearably disturbing.

TNT RoughCut Gabriel J.P. Goldberg

As gruesome as Fargo is, the Coens keep us laughing with a Hollywood-centric view of middle America.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

It's a miracle: A tough, honest, bloody film set so far from the bright lights it feels as if it's on a different planet, yet knowable and absolutely compelling from start to finish.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

A crime gem that is darkly funny even when it's chilling -- and certain to become a classic.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Dizzily rich, witty, and satisfying.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

For all its exaggerated ordinariness, this film seems to start where others leave off.

Mr. Showbiz Richard T. Jameson

The Coens are masters at striking a tone and holding it.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Frances McDormand enjoys the comedic role of her career.

Variety Leonard Klady

In the darkly humorous Fargo, iconoclastic filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen manage the precarious balancing act of respecting genre conventions and simultaneously pushing them to an almost surrealistic extreme. Very funny stuff.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

The brothers, who have always seemed fond of their characters, have never taken quite so overt a stand for life's simple joys.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

An immersion into the characters' world in toto, from the "Oh geezes" and the "Oh, yaahs" to the dark and flinty core beneath.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

The Coens haven't been this sharp, focused and fluid since their first film. This is "Blood Simple's" promise fulfilled.

Film.com Elizabeth Weitzman

This mordant, macabre look at the American obsession with fast food, television and murder is icily funny.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

What mainly registers is the quiet desperation and simple pleasures of ordinary midwestern lives, the fatuous ways that people cover up their emotional and intellectual gaps, and the alternating pointlessness and cuteness of human existence. This may be a masterpiece of sorts, but it left me feeling rotten.

Film.com Shannon Gee

Performances are near-perfect.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The Coen brothers wrote McDormand’s role best. Much of the time they seem to have had “Pulp Fiction” in their ears--strings of incongruous banalities; but with this pregnant cop, they struck some gold of their own. [March 25, 1996]

Film.com Bruce Reid

I don't care if they made up the whole thing. Any five minutes of Fargo feels truer than the whole of, say, "Nixon."

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

With the perfect assist from their actors, all of whom are well in on the joke, this affectionate look at the frozen North brings the Coens back in from the cold.

USA Today Mike Clark

Lean, mean and mordant black comedy.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's easy to admire what the Coens are trying to do in Fargo, but more difficult to actually like the film.

Film.com Keith Simanton

Uniquely fascinating.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

Born and raised in Minnesota, the Coens know their targets well and generally hit them squarely.

Salon.com Laura Miller

To the extent that the joke is on us, the audience, and the decadent taste we've acquired for flashy violence, it works; point taken.

Time Richard Corliss

All attitude and low aptitude.