Saw Fargo. I'm by no means an authority on the Coen brothers, but it occurred to me that they may have a limited palette of characters after watching this film. Francis McDormand's sheriff reminded me of Ed, and the two kidnappers reminded me of Hi's prison buddies with a litte of the lone biker of the Apocalypse added in for the Gaear Grimsrud character. You have a kidnapping, and the father who endures his daughter's kidnapping is pretty much the same kind of guy as Nathan Arizona, who also had his daughter kidnapped--though this control-freak, ball-breaking father apparently has less humor to him.
The cinematography reminded me of Miller's Crossing.
The main reason I think the sense of repeated "ingredients" stood out was Fargo is an ingredients film. Lots of nice bits and bobs, but I'm not sure that it eventually hangs together. William Macy's character shows some promise, for example, but then goes nowhere. What's with the little Japanese rendevous that Frances McDormand has? For sure that should have been on the cutting room floor.
As a pastiche of Columbo, the film sort of works: the crooks are consistently inept bumblers, the witnesses unhelpful, and the sheriff eventually catches them by the sheer luck of driving by and seeing their car. Not that catching them really accomplishes much because they've all succeeded in screwing themselves over worse than the system ever could, while losing 92 percent of the ransom money.
Two and a half stars.
