'FARGO' SUCCEEDS WITH TAKE ON COLD, TRUE CRIME.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Staff Writer

When we first see North Dakota police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) waddle onto a murder scene, pleasant, unflappable and seven months pregnant in "Fargo," we're tempted to think that filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen are out to subvert our expectations, as usual.

After all, she's no macho cop, no pistol-packing power babe. With her brass-tacks banality and sunny-side-up outlook, she's more like TV's Marge Simpson with earflaps and a badge on. Since when does a character like this solve a grisly crime? Where are Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt? Where are Dennis Franz and Jimmy Smits? Where's Batman?

But this time out, there's no fiction involved. Though never short on imagination, the Coens have based this movie - easily one of their best yet - on a true crime story, and it was indeed a very pregnant rural police chief who cracked this notorious Midwestern kidnapping case.

It begins with a weaselly Minneapolis car salesman, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who gets himself deep into debt and can only think of one way out - he'll hire some guys to kidnap his wife, and get his rich father-in-law, Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) to pay $1 million ransom.

Jerry figures if he delivers the ransom money himself, giving the hired thugs a small fraction and keeping the rest, he gets his wife back and gets away with it.

Sure, Jer. Except his gruff, no guff father-in-law wouldn't trust this loser to take out the garbage, let alone deliver the ransom money. And way before it gets to that stage, things go so far wrong that Jerry is in way, way, way over his maladjusted head.

Trouble starts on a snowy highway in the incredibly flat, bleak, empty Dakota plains, when the kidnappers (a neurotic babbler played by Steve Buscemi, and a stonily silent brute played by Peter Stormare) are speeding through the night with Jerry's wife bound and whimpering on the back seat.

A cop pulls them over. The cop doesn't know when to back off. Somebody gets shot. Somebody drives by and sees it, and two more people get shot.

It's about that time that Marge gets a phone call and has to get out of bed and check the darn thing out.

Quite a few more people get brutally, casually killed as the filmmakers follow the trail of human venality into the sub-zero heart of darkness that exists even in this whitest, blandest, snowiest of landscapes.

Indeed, the harsh climate and bleak emptiness of the northern landscape make the perfect canvas for the filmmakers, who make the most of it both aesthetically and thematically.

White on white, no horizon line, and just the splash of human blood to heat things up and break the monotony - that's the basic vision here, from two Minnesota natives (the Coens grew up in a Minneapolis suburb) who escaped to New York.

The Coens' vision may be too corrosive for some people - it's as if the Dakota plains are a blank stage on which these mentally crippled miscreants play out their tragedy: Now is the winter of our discontent made gruesome, hilarious, wicked black comedy.

But the spot-on regional characterizations of these northern yokels are genuinely funny, more affectionate than cruel, and for added relief, we've got warm, well-grounded, tack-sharp Marge Gunderson, who can accurately size up a crime scene while other cops are still wrestling the lids off their Styrofoam coffee cups.

In the battle of good vs. evil, we know we can put our money on Marge.

And beyond that, the Coen brothers ("Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona," "Barton Fink") make movies with such icy precision, such razor's-edge clarity of execution, that their work demands attention.

Bill Macy's performance is brilliant, McDormand's is certainly her funniest yet, and the whole thing goes down as sharp and bracing as a shot of whiskey on a 10-degree night.

Before you get out of that easy chair and venture out to see "Fargo," better make it two shots, and let someone else drive. 'Cause where the Coen brothers are concerned - baby, it's cold outside.

THE FACTS

The film: "Fargo" (R; violence, brief sex).

The stars: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, Harve Presnell.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Joel Coen. Written by Ethan and Joel Coen. Produced by Ethan Coen. Executive producers, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner. Released by Gramercy Pictures.

Running time:One hour, 35 minutes.

Playing: Citywide

Our rating: Three Stars.

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PHOTO

Photo Pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) examines the first victim in a botched kidnapping scheme in "Fargo."