Gaear Grimsrud

"Shut the fuck up! Or I'll throw you back in the trunk, you know?"

- Gaear Grimsrud to Jean

Gaear Grimsrud is one of the two main antagonists of the 1996 crime film, Fargo. He was a Swedish sociopath and criminal who was portrayed by Peter Stormare.

Character Biography
Grimsrud and his partner, Carl Schowalter, are two criminals who are hired by a Minneapolis, Minnesota car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard, to kidnap his wife, Jean, so he can use the ransom money to pay off the money he embezzled from the dealership he is employed at to cover his own debts, which are never clearly specified. Gaear and Carl travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota where they break into Lundegaard's home. Jean hides from them, but Gaear finds her and ties her up. They drive away, but a state trooper pulls them over outside Brainerd. Carl remembers that he forgot to put the temporary dealer plates on the vehicle, and attempts to lie to the trooper. When this fails, Jean squirms in the backseat and the trooper hears her. Gaear then grabs the trooper by the head, drags him into the car, pulls his gun from the glove-box, and shoots the trooper in the head, killing him. Grimsrud then calmly puts the pistol away and scoffs at Carl's "plan", telling him to get the trooper's body off the road. While Carl is doing so, two teenagers drive by and see this. They speed off, intending to tell the police, and Gaear pursues them, flicking his cigarette out the window. They lose control of their car and swerve off the road, and Gaear pulls over, shooting one in the back and the other in the head. They hide at a lakeside cabin, and Gaear eventually becomes annoyed with Jean, later beating her to death. After a dispute with Carl over the money, Gaear kills Carl and shreds up his body in a wood-chipper. However, before he can complete the job, he is caught by the police, shot in the leg and arrested after trying to escape across frozen Moose Lake. Gaear's fate is left unknown, although he most likely got sent to prison for life, as Minnesota doesn't use the death penalty.

Gaear's total body count in the film is five. He kills the Minnesota State Trooper, the two teenage hunters, Jean and Carl. Gaear's weapon of choice is namely a nickel-plated SIG-Sauer P226 pistol, although he does use other weapons, like an axe and a woodchipper.

Personality
A quiet man, Grimsrud only utters 80 words in the entire film. Carl Schowalter, his accomplice, on the other hand, speaks 238 in the first scene alone. Throughout the film, it's a constant battle to see who's crazier. The motor-mouthed, hot-tempered Carl against the silent but extremely violent Grimsrud. Grimsrud uses his body language to convey his character's insanity, relying on blank stares, concealing black thoughts behind black eyes. Despite having few lines in the film, Grimsrud nonetheless displays himself as a person who is endlessly disgusted with human beings, which most likely makes it so easy for him to kill people. Grimsrud is completely devoid of normal human emotions and is best summed-up as an unpleasant, unpredictable sociopath. When he's watching a soap opera on TV, when one of the characters dramatically (and acting rather badly) proclaims to be pregnant and having the other character's baby he drops his fork in shock, but when Showalter comes crashing in through the door bleeding from a gunshot wound in his mouth, he's completely unfazed. Gaear Grimsrud is well-known for his extremely violent and sudden actions. Stormare's performance as the killer still sticks with audiences today.