It's impossible not to fall in love with this delightful little film.

The plot is the stuff of hackneyed pulp -- a man is so desperately cash-strapped that he decides to get his wife kidnapped, get his father-in-law to pay the ransom, and split the ransom with the kidnappers -- but Joel and Ethan draw this familiar storyline with such fine attention-to-detail and intricate brush-strokes, not to mention embellishing it with colourful characters, that the result is an absurdly funny, disarmingly raw look at life.

Plots of this kind act as an introduction to indicate that things will, very soon, go belly up. It is said the best laid plans always do -- and these weren't even as elaborate, car-salesman Jerry Lundegaard having found a pair of true incompetents in Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare).

The morons leave an unfortunate trail of blood in their wake, and from all of the area's Minnesota nice behaviour must arise a great cop to catch them.

And she does. Frances McDormand's chief of police Marge Gunderson is right up there in the annals of Top Characters Of All Time, a pregnant woman who indiscriminately gorges on junk food and happens to be a pretty sharp cop.

And while she's afflicted by the singsong folsky merriment common to all residents of Brainerd -- the Minnesota town the film is set in -- Marge has a significantly sarcastic turn of phrase, which, coupled with her never-nonsense manner, makes her unimaginably endearing.

The film opens with a fake note convincing us that the film is a true story, changing only names but no other details. Carter Burwell's bittersweet soundtrack plays over white as the names quietly fade in and out.

A car appears through this snow, towing another car to a roadside diner. The driver, Jerry Lundegaard walks up to a booth with a comatose yet cigarette-smoking Grimsrud and a petulant Showalter, annoyed that they've had to wait so long.

After he tells them that he has a brand new car outside for them, they introduce themselves to Jerry who hands them car keys and looks blankly at the two guys for a couple of seconds, before getting up with a. Showalter is annoyed again, saying that he also owes them $40,000. Jerry explains the concept of the ransom, Showalter feigns ignorance and Grimsrud sits up.

Between the awkward client and the imbecilic crooks, we're already set for a joyous ride: and all this premise-setting is done in four and a half minutes. Check out the video.

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