Key Takeaways
- Distinctive Style: The Coen Brothers are known for their unique filmmaking style, exemplified in Fargo.
- Similar Themes: Films like Wind River and Bottle Rocket share thematic and stylistic elements with Fargo.
- Dark Humor: Many movies inspired by the Coen Brothers incorporate dark humor and absurdity.
- Cultural Impact: The influence of the Coen Brothers extends beyond their own films, shaping the work of other filmmakers.
The Coen Brothers have one of the most distinctive filmmaking styles in Hollywood history, and this has brought them great acclaim more than once, especially with their critically acclaimed 1996 masterpiece <em>Fargo</em>. This was the movie that helped the brothers break out from being cult filmmakers to actually earning award recognition, with Fargo earning seven Oscar nominations at the 69th Academy Awards.
Fargo has all the Coen Brothers’ tricks and traits, from weirdly named characters and a regional Americana location to a dark sense of humor and genuine existential absurdity. Fargo is about a man who has his wife kidnapped and held for ransom so he can get the money from her wealthy father to help save his failing car dealership. When people start to die, everything goes wrong. The dark humor added to the violence plays out in all the Coen Brothers’ movies.
Just like many other cult favorite film directors from the 1980s and 1990s, the Coen Brothers saw their style copied by other filmmakers, and it was the style, even more than the filmmakers, that became a huge selling point in Hollywood. However, many copycat movies fail because they don’t have what made the originals so great, just aping the style instead. That said, here are eight movies that weren’t made by the Coen Brothers but remain films that any Fargo lover should watch.
Wind River (2017)
Wind River doesn’t have the dark humor or the weird characters that Fargo has, but it does share a similar landscape and is about a murder gone wrong. In fact, this movie, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone), is perfect for anyone who loves Fargo but wants something more serious. Just like Fargo, Wind River takes place in a snowy northern landscape as police investigate the death of a murdered Indigenous woman.
The movie has a great cast, with Jeremy Renner as a tracker and Elizabeth Olsen as a young FBI agent. The film is also very important, as Sheridan made it to shine a light on the large number of Indigenous women who disappear or are murdered every year in cases that are never solved, and that are rarely even noted. Wind River also had a sequel made, but it has still never been released.
Bottle Rocket (1996)
A Coen Brothers movie is easy to recognize because of the weird characters, the eclectic dialogue, an off-kilter story, and the distinctive design of the movie. The same can be said of a Wes Anderson movie, and when looking specifically at Anderson’s early career movies, it is easy to see a strong similarity between the Coen Brothers and Anderson’s look at the myth of small-town Americana.
Bottle Rocket is about two friends, one of whom escapes from a psychiatric hospital, who plan to pull off several heists to finally hit it big. However, just like in any Coen Brothers movie, like Fargo, nothing goes right, and the bumbling mistakes send their plans to imminent doom. Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson star in the movie, and their characters could easily live in any Coen movie, with a crime gone wrong that compares well with the scam in Fargo.
The Ice Harvest (2005)
Released in 2005, The Ice Harvest is a late-career movie by Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) that is unlike anything the director had ever made before. The movie is similar to Fargo in that both are about a criminal plan that has almost no chance of going right. In this case, two men (John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton) are about to leave town after stealing $2 million from a local mobster (Randy Quaid).
However, a snowstorm and icy roads force them to postpone their getaway as the mobster begins to close in on them. What really makes this comparable to Fargo, other than the snowy landscape, is the fact that neither thief can trust the other, and other people learn what happened and try to get a piece for themselves. It shares Fargo’s double-crosses, and not everyone gets out of this movie alive.
Shimmer Lake (2017)
Shimmer Lake is a movie that remains highly underrated but deserves a much larger audience. This is a Netflix original neo-noir crime film written and directed by Oren Uziel in his directorial debut. The movie is strikingly similar to Fargo, taking place in a small town where a bank robbery leads to betrayals, tragic twists, and deaths that never should happen yet do—all in darkly humorous ways.
The movie is also told in reverse order, with the final climax playing out first followed by events leading up to that moment shown piece by piece as the puzzle comes together. The cast is spectacular with Benjamin Walker, Wyatt Russell, Rainn Wilson, Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston, Stephanie Sigman among others. The characters in Shimmer Lake could easily exist in a world like Fargo’s where dark comedy moments seem highly influenced by the Coen Brothers.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017)
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The story is darker and more emotional than Fargo but McDormand is a force of nature just like she was in Fargo here she plays an angry woman demanding law enforcement do what needs to be done after failing her family.
A Simple Plan (1998)
A Simple Plan feels like a Coen Brothers movie for one big reason Sam Raimi directed it he was roommates with them when they were rising up together through Hollywood ranks.
In Bruges (2008)
The result is wild comedic ride as bullets fly around Bruges.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang remains one of offbeat crime films of twenty-first century.
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