Perhaps the best aspect about writer-directors Joel & Ethan Coen when it comes to making screwball and dark comedies is that despite the fact some of their characters are hopelessly stupid, the duo never looks down on their poor fools with malice or cruelty, rather, with sympathy and some degree of likability. In Fargo , we don't fully shame Jerry Lundegaard for turning to two professional criminals as a way to make a quick payday - he's desperate to make ends meet, and to show to his asshole father-in-law that he's a mistake her daughter never should have made. How was he to know that Gaear Grimsrud was a sociopathic murderer; that his partner, Carl Showalter, was inept; and that the whole plan of kidnapping his wife to force a ransom of $80,000.00 would go so tits up? In Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? , Ulysses, Pete and Delmar are dim-witted criminals who escape the chain gang, but there's an earnestness to why they're escaping: the leader (Ulysses) is looki