Fargo

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Black Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1996	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	94 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Biographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection then Menu
Region	0	Director	Joel Coen
Distributor	Polygram	Starring	Frances McDormand William H. Macy Steve Buscemi Harve Presnell Peter Stormare
RRP	$34.95	Music	Carter Burwell

    It stars William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, a failing car salesman married to a wife with a rich father. He covets her father's riches, and hits upon the plan of staging her kidnapping to extort money out of his father-in-law. Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and his bloodthirsty friend, (played by Peter Stormare) oblige by kidnapping Jerry's wife.

    Things go wrong, and pretty soon three people are dead, which leads to the Brainerd chief-of-police, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) investigating the crime. Things go from bad to worse for Jerry and his partners-in-crime, until we reach the film's ultimate conclusion.

    Along the way, we poke fun at "true story" movies, small towns, Psycho, American cars, morning sickness, pregnancy, and various other aspects of American life. All-in-all, this was a very amusing movie to watch. I'll never look at a mulcher in quite the same way ever again...

Video

    This problem occurred with my Pioneer DV-505 player. I had the opportunity of briefly spinning this disc up on a Creative Encore drive, and this did not have the problem during the first part of the credits which is all that I had time to check.

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. There is also a Full Frame version of the movie on the other side of the disc. Incidentally, the movie is packed into the Amaray case such that the Full Frame version is the "default" version - not that this is a big deal at all.

    The transfer was very sharp and very clear at all times. Shadow detail was excellent, which is good given that a good proportion of this movie is shot in low lit conditions.

    The colours were beautifully rendered in this transfer, and I have no complaint at all about them.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts was comprised of some minor shimmering on venetian blinds and some shimmering on a few shots of cars. A few scenes were marred by film artefacts, but generally this was a very clean transfer.

Audio

    Dialogue was clear pretty much all of the time, though occasionally a line of dialogue was a little hard to make out.

    The music is unremarkable, and seemed to have a slight left and right presence, even though it was mostly centre channel only.

     The surround channels were not used as far as I could tell.

    The .1 channel was not used. My surround sound processor sent a little signal to the subwoofer, but this was rare.

Menu

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The video quality, excluding the opening titles, and end credits problem, is top notch. However, I would advise you to either rent this disc first to see if your player has the pausing problem, or to wait for a reissue. If this problem was not present, this disc would rate either a four or a four-and-a-half star rating for the video quality.

    The audio quality is good quality but essentially monaural. Until I have definitive information otherwise, I will assume that we have not been ripped off with the soundtrack, and that this is the way the movie has been mixed.

    The extras are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
8th January 1999