Fargo

[Bill Burns]

Craig writes:

>I think the Coens intend 
>us to believe that this applies well outside the narrow confines of 
>Minnesota. Small wonder then that when our heroine reprimands 
>the one surviving kidnapper for thinking only of money, she sounds 
>less like she's delivering a moral to the audience than like she's 
>trying to reassure herself that her values still have any meaning in 
>the world she inhabits.

My sense is they intend us to believe the inverse--that what applies
elsewhere also applies in this backwater Minnesota community. The Coens are
flouting the expectations of the audience by associating this dialect with
criminal behavior. Typically, criminals in American movies tend to speak a
limited range of dialects, which often represent other biases that Americans
harbor covertly. 
It's not the most original use of dialect, but its effect is interesting. 

The one point someone made, about the dialect being a highly distorted
representation of that region's dialect characteristics, fits with
Hollywood's typical use of dialect.