The fact its a Coen brothers film tells you this isn’t going to be ordinary. Jerry (William H. Macy) needs money and hires two thugs to fake a kidnap of his wife so he can collect ransom money from his rich father-in-law. Needless to say it all goes horribly wrong, leaving small town and heavily pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) to investigate the growing collection of bodies.

Set in the bleak snow driven landscape of the American Midwest, this is one of those ‘cult’ movies with a lovely black humour. It’s very funny without trying too hard to be so. For example, a thug tries to bury the loot, digging a hole next to a fence post. Only to look up and see, stretching across a blank snow covered landscape, miles and miles of fence with identical fence-posts. So he places his ice-scraper as a marker. As you can see, not the smartest cookie. A real film makers type of film.

“Yah!” “I guess that’s your partner in the woodchipper over there…”