The 23-minute prologue for Fargo’s fourth season (debuting Sept. 27 on FX) unfolds a 50-year history of crime syndicates in Kansas City. The Moskowitz Syndicate, the Milligan Concern, the Fadda Family, the Cannon Limited: Jewish, Irish, Italian, and Black syndicates, respectively, all squabbling for domination of the underworld.Fargo Season 1-4 Download.
This delicate balance of power plays out onscreen with all the cultural specificity of a Street Fighter 2 character select screen. Dueling mobs choreograph simultaneous arrivals at diplomatic ceasefires, and stomp their feet for dramatic collective percussion. Important characters are introduced with chyrons and mugshot smash cuts, the kind of hyperlink editing Guy Ritchie ruined 20 years ago. The montage covers half a century, and everyone is a parody. The first time the Irish crime lord (Ira Amyx) talks, he hands a little boy a whiskey flask: “Put some hair on your bollocks!” That is certainly something the Irish say, I guess, when they’re not escaping the pesky kids who are always after their Lucky Charms.
“To keep the peace,” a narrator explains, “The boss of each family gave offer of his youngest son in trade.” It’s a Medieval arrangement with a hat tip to Jack Kirby, and the first thing that ruins this frantic season is how absolutely no one takes the unlikely arrangement seriously. The prologue moves through generations of swapped princelings and criminal backstabbery before arriving in 1950, where aging godfather Donatello Fadda (Tommaso Ragno) and rising kingpin Loy Cannon (Chris Rock) exchange sons. It’s a peace offering, yet all conversation promises imminent bloodbath. “We should move on them already,” says Donatello’s preening son Josto (Jason Schwartzman). Redcoated Mafia enforcer Calamita (Gaetano Bruno) looks ready to shoot everyone anytime. Across town, Loy’s wife Buel (J. Nicole Brooks) demands to know when her son will come home. “As soon as I see their throats,” Loy swears.