FARGO Starring Frances McDormand, William Macy. Director: Joel Coen. Category III. Now showing at Golden Gateway, Majestic, UA (Queensway, Sha Tin, Times Square).
With their debut Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan Coen re-invented the film noir by putting a blacker-than-black spin on the genre. The brothers do pretty much the same with the thriller: starting with a standard kidnapping plot, they take Fargo into unusual places by means of off-the-wall characters and outre plot diversions.
It is a great outing which marries the Coens' imaginative flair to a true story.
Typically, the Coens take a genre, say, the gangster film, and push the material to such an extent they create something original, as in Miller's Crossing. Characters are not drawn from real life, but from old movies and pulp fiction - twin obsessions of the film-makers.
Fargo, then, is a different type of project, based on an actual event that took place in Minnesota, in the American Midwest, in 1987.
Jerry Lundergard, a conniving car salesman, has got into major debt, and decides to try an original solution. Through an ex-con contact, he arranges for some thugs to kidnap his wife and collect a US$80,000 ransom from her wealthy father, which he promises to split with the kidnappers.
