Marge Gunderson
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Marge Gunderson is a fictional character from the film Fargo (1996). She is potrayed by Frances McDormand. The character was ranked #33 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, as a hero. McDormand also won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
The film is set in the year of 1987, at winter time. Gunderson is happily married to a painter named Norm, she is seven months pregnant police officer from Brainerd, Minnesota. She is called late one night, while in bed to investigate a kidnapping case. It involves Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), a car salesman from Minneapolis, Minnesota with financial troubles. Jerry arranges a meeting at a bar in Fargo, North Dakota to hire two men, the "funny looking" Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and the laconic Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), to kidnap his wife, Jean (Kristin Rudrüd). Jerry hopes to use the ransom money to be paid by his wealthy and contemptuous father-in-law, Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) to pay off large, unspecified debts. In exchange, Carl and Gaear are to receive a new Oldsmobile Ciera and "half of the ransom." (Actually, Lundegaard is swindling the kidnappers: he tells them the ransom is $80,000, while telling his father-in-law the amount is actually $1 million.)
The plan falls apart, however. Jerry's financial troubles are not explained. He is shown receiving progressively angrier phone calls demanding that he provide vehicle identification numbers for cars he used to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in GMAC loans. Even after the kidnapping plan is afoot, he resorts to attempting to get extra money out of one customer by adding an unrequested weather-proof sealant to a car.
The kidnapping plan takes a dramatic turn for the worse when a state trooper pulls over the kidnappers near Brainerd, Minnesota. After an unsuccessful bribe attempt by Carl, Gaear murders the trooper and two witnesses who happen to drive by. Gunderson follows the chain of events very closley over the course of four or less months. Jerry's plan spirals further out of control both on- and off-screen. After a botched ransom delivery in which Wade unwisely tries to apply his business-world bullying, Wade is shot dead by Carl, but not before the former manages to get off a shot that tracks along the edge of Carl's face. In leaving the parking garage, Carl also shoots and kills the lot attendant, in contrast to his previous disgust at Gaear's cold-blooded triple murder. Carl buries the money by the side of the highway and returns to the shack where Gaear is staying. Gaear has in this time killed Jean. Carl, bleeding and frantic over being shot, wants to leave as soon as possible and says that he's taking the car. Gaear, in a rare use of speech, says that they'll split the car as one will pay the other for his half. Carl angrily tells Gaear that he's been shot in the face and the car is therefore his for his trouble. As Carl walks to the car, Gaear runs up behind him and hits Carl square in the face with an axe.
Gaear tries to dispose of Carl's body. Marge, after investigating various leads, and after Jerry flees her questioning at the auto lot, gets an idea of where the kidnappers are holing up and comes on the property just in time to see Gaear pushing the last of Carl into a wood-chipper. As Gaear flees, Marge shoots him in the leg and arrests him. On the drive back to the station, Marge tries to talk to the clearly sociopathic Gaear, unable to comprehend how he can do what he does "for a little bit of money." And, as Marge says, "it's a beautiful day."
Jerry, going by the alias "Anderson", is staying at a remote motel outside of Bismarck, North Dakota where he finds police knocking at his door and seizing him. As Jerry is being wrestled out of the window and handcuffed on the bed, he bucks and screams like an animal.
In the final scene, Gunderson and Norm sit in bed together watching television. Norm comments that the results were announced. Marge enthusiastically demands, "So?" Norm diffidently shares that his duck painting got the 3-cent stamp, but that it's not a very popular denomination. Marge disagrees, supportively assuring him that people use the 3-cent every time the postage goes up. The couple contentedly murmur, "two more months" in anticipation of the baby, thus sharply contrasting the evil that Marge has seen. In the end nobody gets the money.
