A beautiful riff on the original set in the same snowy environs of North Dakota and Minnesota.
Martin Freeman you feel works really hard at getting his accents just right. He and Billy Bob Thornton really stand out, acting-wise, but all the other parts are played well too - Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Keith Carradine, Adam Goldberg and Russell Harvard (the muscle), Oliver Platt.
It's 2006. In Platt's flashback, we think he finds the bag of cash that was hidden and never found from the original film - quite a stroke of genius. Then in delirious plotting, he returns, in some bargain with God, to rebury the money, only to have his son die in a car crash, the result of frozen fish dropping from the skies!
Standout scenes include the shoot out in the blizzard, and Thornton's visit to the Organisation in Fargo, where the camera tracks his progress from the outside of the building and we hear the audio of the chaos he brings; meanwhile the two FBI surveillance guys miss the whole thing!
Then that audacious single track from Hanks' in speed trap car through the woods to a road and another vehicle also driven by Hanks the mailman, and it's a year later. And things have somewhat moved on in the romance department as Tolman is now heavily pregnant and Hanks' daughter Joey King has a lovely new grandfather. Freeman is the cocky Salesman of the Year and when he confronts Thornton in a Vegas hotel he stupidly won't leave it alone and drops himself and his unfortunate new wife Susan Park into danger. Perhaps the only slightly unsatisfying moment is where Hanks finally traps Thornton and just executes him - it would have been more satisfying if the bad guy had been armed, for example.
But overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable and creative experience.
Jordan Peele, FBI Agent Budge, later directed Get Out.
In that final family scene, composer James Russo does, I think, reference Carter Burwell's original score in a lovely tribute.
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