Snowy North Dakota sets the scene for this maliciously amusing story of a botched kidnapping. William H Macy is a car salesman in the need of some big bucks. He hires two inept scum buckets, to kidnap his wife thus letting him cash in on a huge ransom to be paid by his father-in-law. Frances McDormand plays the pregnant police chief that takes charge of picking up the pieces of the crime that has become unravelled.
Jerry Lundegaard (William H Macy) is in a financial jam and, out of desperation, comes up with a plan to hire two highly erratic and contrasting unlawful characters (Steve Buscemi & Peter Stormare), to kidnap his wife and demand ransom from her wealthy father (Harve Presnell), to be secretly split between Jerry and the perpetrators. Jerry, who is not the most astute of individuals, hires the deadly duo from the frozen northern reaches of Fargo, North Dakota for the job. That's the plan, but what happens is something totally different. Blood is shed when a cop and two innocent people are killed. Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is the pregnant police officer that investigates the murders. While Marge investigates, Jerry gets involved in deeper darker problems, ranging from financial troubles, to tormenting meetings with the police and threats from the kidnappers. .
Jerry Lundegaard isn't the most confident of people, and this is evident straight away, he is late whilst meeting the kidnappers and always seems on edge and is apologising to people that he is employing, he allows himself to get bullied by the kidnappers throughout the opening sequence.
The kidnappers Carl and Gaear are an odd duo, Carl (Steve Buscemi) described as "kinda funny lookin" throughout the movie, has a violent personality and lets his temper take control of him far to easily. This is evident throughout the movie, in particularly, when he brutally murders in cold blood the car park attendant, and when he kills Wade in the same car park.
