One of the best crime movies ever made, deservedly on AFI’s list of the top 100 films (no. 84). This is the Coen film that brought flesh-and-blood characters and a cinematic theme eclipsing their technical skills.

Fargo is about American crime. The ridiculous crime you read about in newspaper blurbs. The Coens offer a rich explanation behind “Man Found Shredded in Wood Chipper” or “Couple Carves Fetus out of Young Woman.” But while the story is mythic (aided by Carter Burwell’s memorably dark score), the characters are not mythical. William H. Macy is a scared, little man who wants to make his mark, gets in hock, and cooks up a scheme to have his wife kidnapped and ransomed. The kidnappers (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) are ignorant and brutal, sharp, cunning animals who subsist on the reticence of victims to respond. That they will resort to violence is never in doubt. They are criminal through-and-through, of the type depicted in In Cold Blood or One False Move or, for a truer example, in occasional “Real Live Video” shows. The killers in Fargo remind me of a true video I saw of a carjacking, which was filmed from inside the car. The “carjackee” is an undercover cop, and he tries to calm the carjacker down to give the police time to swoop in. The carjacker will not be assuaged.  He is a vicious animal, constantly pointing his gun at the undercover cop, threatening to blow his head off. Up until the moment the police swoop in and disarm him, the criminal is a beast. Immediately upon being disarmed, however, the carjacker is all, “It’s cool, it’s cool.” He’s smiling. He’s reasonable. He’s a completely different person, almost in a prep mode to appear more deferential and misunderstood.

Here, the Coens show something rare in crime films – they show the killers in everyday, mundane life, as driving companions, as drinking buddies, as guys picking up chicks at a bar, or holed up watching TV and waiting for the money. Then, after we laugh at or with them and become more comfortable with their demonstrated incompetence, the directors show us their vicious sociopathy. Quickly, their first instinct when pressured is to kill, and they do it without remorse or reflection. They eventually turn on each other, and it is Macy who let loose these furies through his mind-numbing weakness.

Their foil is Frances McDormand, a pregnant sheriff who has a simple uncomplicated sensitivity and a very clear, tough line of right-and-wrong. She still doesn’t understand Stormare, who, at the end, sits forlornly in her squad car:  “There’s more to life than a little money, ya know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are. And it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.”  That’s enough for her.

What McDormand exudes, unlike the tortured Sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones in the Coens’ bookend film No Country for Old Men,  is that she really doesn’t care to understand it. She’s not interested in giving a Stormare the time to think about his motives, his beginnings, his modified persona as a captured animal. He’s an animal, she knows it, and she moves on.

In this way, I also think Fargo is a uniquely American movie, a window to a culture that champions individual rights yet accepts the death penalty. That’s nifty work, one that keeps you interested in the criminals, but does not elicit anything more than the most base sympathies (though it is hard not to feel somewhat bad for the hapless Buscemi as he tries to hide money with a bullet in his face).

Sam Mendes’ follow-up to the overpraised American Beauty almost survives the miscasting of Tom Hanks, the overacting of Jude Law, an at-times leaden script, and an unhealthy preoccupation with slow visuals.  With all of that, Road to Perdition is also a beautiful movie graced by some very smart, substantial performances by Paul Newman (his last big screen role) and Stanley Tucci as mobsters working in the same organization.  Thomas Newman’s haunting score is perfect for the material, and the set design, art direction, costumes and cinematography recreating the Depression-era Midwest are impeccable.

But a film about fathers and sons cannot survive a child actor who does not resonate.  The actor playing Hanks’ son is not awful but he’s not very good either.  As our narrator, he simply doesn’t register, and as the guide to the life of his father (mob enforcer but family man Michael Sullivan, played by Hanks), this cannot do. Indeed, the last line of the film is “He was my father.”

It didn’t really seem like it.

Hanks is also problematic. His character is a bit like Eastwood’s William Munny in Unforgiven.  He is supposed to have demons.  The way Sullivan is played by Hanks, however, is as more of an automaton.  When things are going well, Hanks seems grimly fine with family and pot roast and a solid 9 to 5 job committing violence on behalf of his boss and father-figure (Newman).  When things go poorly, you get the sense Hanks doesn’t really have much to reassess.  He just seems sad that the easy 9 to 5 gig is up (and up in a rather cruel manner).  When he does soften, it seems too easy, like a swell guy has been just beneath that hard surface all along. The role is a lily-pad to a villain, but Hanks drowns on it.

And can Hollywood please take the “powerful and honorable man driven to treachery by his weak issue” trope out back and put it down with a bullet?  The weak son here – Daniel Craig – is entertainingly rotten, but God, I’ve had enough!

Hanks does have some moments, such as his meeting with an amused Tucci, where he tries to offer his services in return for permission to exact revenge on his old employers.  But overall, I don’t think he was the right call.  Bruce Willis may have been a more apt choice.  Certainly Ed Harris.  The best choice would have been Chris Cooper.

Still, there is enough good in here to watch.