"Two words. Marge Gunderson."
— Kate Muir, Times (UK)
"Rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen."
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Chief Gunderson was created by the Coens specifically for Frances McDormand ... and they've been rewarded by a brilliant and unblinking comic performance."
— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"Fargo has been hauntingly photographed by Roger Deakins with great, expressive use of white-outs that sometimes make the characters appear to be moving through a dream."
— Janet Maslin, New York Times
"It's a miracle: A tough, honest, bloody film set so far from the bright lights it feels as if it's on a different planet, yet knowable and absolutely compelling from start to finish."
— Ann Hornaday, Baltimore Sun
"Fargo, with its grotesque murders and cheery detectives, is a cold gem that takes us to the far north. Its seemingly pitiless light opens up the realms of darkness concealed beneath that world of white."
— Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"In the darkly humorous Fargo, iconoclastic filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen manage the precarious balancing act of respecting genre conventions and simultaneously pushing them to an almost surrealistic extreme. Very funny stuff."
— Leonard Klady, Variety
"Fargo is a concert performance--an illuminating amalgam of emotion and thought. It glimpses into the heart of man and unearths a blackly comic nature, hellishly mercurial and selfish, yet strangely innocent. If it weren't so funny, it would be unbearably disturbing."
— Arnold Wayne Jones, Dallas Observer