10 Most Sympathetic Movie Kidnappers And Hostage Takers
3. Jerry Lundegaard - Fargo (1996)
"The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred."
So everything from the bleak, snow-white, midwestern landscape to mild-mannered but desperate car salesman Jerry Lundegaard was supposedly authentic in Joel and Ethan Coens blacker-than-pitch comedy. Thats flatly contradicted by the "No similarity to actual persons, living or dead..." disclaimer at the end, but seems typical of the Coens wry humour. As does the writer/director/producer brothers simultaneous mockery of, and affection for, their characters - even Jerry, by their own definition a laughable über-schmuck. Living the underside of the American dream, his financial crisis and failure to elicit funds for a big deal from his hardnosed father-in-law leads him to what he sees as the solution: he sets up a meeting via an ex-con acquaintance at the nearby town of Fargo with gabby Carl Showalter (Buscemi), to plan out the faked kidnapping of Jerrys wife as an alternative route to her Daddys pursestrings. Anyone with more brain than earwax can see disaster in the offing - but not Jerry. Not even when Carl brings along an accomplice, the socially autistic Gaear Grimsrud (Stormare), whose visible alienation is the engine that drives the bloody (but almost casual) mayhem. But then Jerry Lundegaard is the product of a polite, simple, pleasant environment, where people fuss unhurriedly over Swedish smorgasbords at the local diner, and a softly Nordic "yaah" inflects most peoples conversation. Its unlikely that this showroom merchant could recognise sociopathy staring him in the face though his gormless instinct for digging himself ever further into a hole doesnt help either. As Joel Coen said at the time, "A kidnapping is pregnant with dramatic possibilities - the conflicts, the high stakes, all the obvious drama and melodramatic things..." From Jerrys harebrained scheme springs a trail of violence by Grimsrud (and, less bloodily, senior lowlife Carl) that occurs so randomly you wonder how hes managed to stay out of the state pen for more than a fortnight. By the time heavily pregnant police detective Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand - Joels own wife, making his pregnancy metaphor a possible Freudian slip), the dysfunctional duo have gunned down a traffic cop, a witness driver and his daughter, and a car-park attendant. When its revealed that Gaear has snuffed out Mrs. Lundegaard, the unfortunate hostage, it seems almost par for the course. Jerry, meanwhile, the bland-faced architect of so much tragedy, is dragged screaming from the motel where hes hiding - having promised his young son (and seemingly himself) that Mom will come to no harm. "And all this for what?" Detective Margie asks her captive Grimsrud (who by now has comically shoved ex-partner Carls remains through a wood chipper). "A little money!" Yeah, but a little money will do it. As the traditional motive for kidnapping and hostage-taking, its almost infinite in its potential as mayhem bait. Certainly, Fargo itself spins off and on: in one of the more successful contemporary TV series originating from a movie concept, originator/scriptwriter Noah Hawley played more creatively with his one-off 98-minute inspiration than Hannibal and Bates Motel did with the Lecter and Psycho franchises.
Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
