Fargo (1996) on Netflix
Jerry Lundegaard, a Minneapolis car salesman in debt, arranges for his wife to be taken so that her wealthy father will pay. Police chief Marge Gunderson, seven months pregnant, investigates.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb8.1/10797,246 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
At a car dealership in Minneapolis that belongs to his father-in-law, Wade Gustafson, Jerry Lundegaard runs sales and is short of cash. He arranges to have his wife, Jean, taken so that Wade will pay to get her back. On the word of Shep Proudfoot, a mechanic at the lot who is on parole, Jerry meets Gaear Grimsrud and Carl Showalter in a bar in Fargo, North Dakota. The two men agree to the job for a car and part of the money Jerry hopes to collect from Wade. Jerry believes Wade has approved a large loan for a land deal and tries to undo the plan. In Brainerd, police chief Marge Gunderson, seven months pregnant, opens an investigation.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fargo (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- William H. Macy was so determined to play Jerry Lundegaard that he flew to New York uninvited during casting and told the Coen brothers, "I want to read again because I'm scared you're going to screw this up and hire someone else... Guys, this is my role. I want this."
- Future North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who was taking his software company public around the time of the film's release, recalled that investors asked about the movie in 100 percent of his meetings' first questions, and that his office would joke they had no paper shredders, only wood chippers.
- To prepare for playing pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson, Frances McDormand learned how to fire a gun, spent days talking with a real pregnant officer, and said she may have partly modeled the character on her own sister, a chaplain at a women's maximum-security prison.
- The special edition DVD contains an account that Fargo was inspired by the 1986 murder of a Danish-American flight attendant from Connecticut at the hands of her husband, who disposed of her body through a wood chipper.
- Joel Coen eventually admitted outright that the film's opening claim of being a true story was invented, saying "the story was completely made up, or, as we like to say, the only thing true about it is that it's a story."
- Unusually low snowfall totals in central and southern Minnesota meant the scenes requiring snow-covered landscapes had to be shot in northern Minnesota and northeastern North Dakota, though not near the cities of Fargo and Brainerd.
- Despite its title, no part of Fargo was actually filmed in the city of Fargo itself, though the local convention and visitors bureau now displays original script pages and props from the movie, including the wood-chipper prop.
