There are two versions of the Coen Brothers' debut film Blood Simple – the theatrical print, plus a director's cut version which, curiously enough, is several minutes SHORTER than the other version. The Coens' director's cut is tightened up in terms of editing and includes a few sections of altered soundtrack - but in truth, they haven't improved what was already a very fine movie
thankfully they haven't worsened it either. And in either of its editions – whether it be the longer theatrical cut or the director's cut - it is still a film which oozes class.
Seedy Texan bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya, never better) is convinced that his pretty young wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is having an affair. He hires sleazy private dick Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to find out if he's right and, sure enough, Visser soon discovers Abby spending a night of passion in a roadside motel with one of Marty's bartenders, Ray (John Getz). Visser even gets a number of photographs of the lovers in compromising positions, just to prove what he has discovered. Later, burning with jealousy and hatred, Marty offers Visser $10,000 if he will kill the adulterous lovers. It is here where Blood Simple suddenly stops being a standard thriller about treachery and murder, and steps into a wickedly warped world of its own. To say more about the plot would be to give away some of the most cunning and well- crafted twists seen at the movies in many a long year. Let it be sufficient to say that every character finds themselves progressively sinking deeper into their own web of scheming and counter-scheming. Double crosses take place; murdered people turn out to be still alive; erroneous assumptions are made about who is out to harm who.
What makes Blood Simple so fascinating is the way it tangles cause and consequence with such ingenuity, creating a plot that is at once cunningly complicated yet simple to understand. A number of actors give career-best performances, notably Hedaya, Getz and Walsh. The latter especially is brilliantly memorable as the slimy, unscrupulous, maniacally giggling private eye whose moral compass is about as far off- centre as it's possible to get. McDormand is excellent too, as the main female character, who may – according to various moments of deliberate story disorientation – be either a femme fatale or an innocent victim of circumstance. Carter Burwell's evocative score adds to the atmosphere, while Barry Sonnenfeld provides fabulous cinematography (several years before becoming a director himself, of such titles as Men In Black and Get Shorty). The dialogue crackles thanks to the Coens' wonderful script, with Joel himself taking the lone directing duties and turning in a masterclass of suspense and unpredictability. The only flaw – an extremely minor one at that – is the inclusion of a couple of thriller clichés. Most prominent among these is the way these films always seem to feel compelled to incorporate a 'shock' nightmare sequence and Blood Simple is no different, injecting a not-very-necessary scene towards the end where a dead character turns up in a dream to spook one of the others. Otherwise, the film skilfully avoids clichés, emerging a supremely absorbing, well-made and confident debut from two men who have spent the thirty years since giving us one brilliant film after another. If someone, somewhere, told the Coens to "start as you mean to go on", they certainly did just that, hitting the heights at the first time of asking with this quite wonderful little thriller.
Seedy Texan bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya, never better) is convinced that his pretty young wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is having an affair. He hires sleazy private dick Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to find out if he's right and, sure enough, Visser soon discovers Abby spending a night of passion in a roadside motel with one of Marty's bartenders, Ray (John Getz). Visser even gets a number of photographs of the lovers in compromising positions, just to prove what he has discovered. Later, burning with jealousy and hatred, Marty offers Visser $10,000 if he will kill the adulterous lovers. It is here where Blood Simple suddenly stops being a standard thriller about treachery and murder, and steps into a wickedly warped world of its own. To say more about the plot would be to give away some of the most cunning and well- crafted twists seen at the movies in many a long year. Let it be sufficient to say that every character finds themselves progressively sinking deeper into their own web of scheming and counter-scheming. Double crosses take place; murdered people turn out to be still alive; erroneous assumptions are made about who is out to harm who.
What makes Blood Simple so fascinating is the way it tangles cause and consequence with such ingenuity, creating a plot that is at once cunningly complicated yet simple to understand. A number of actors give career-best performances, notably Hedaya, Getz and Walsh. The latter especially is brilliantly memorable as the slimy, unscrupulous, maniacally giggling private eye whose moral compass is about as far off- centre as it's possible to get. McDormand is excellent too, as the main female character, who may – according to various moments of deliberate story disorientation – be either a femme fatale or an innocent victim of circumstance. Carter Burwell's evocative score adds to the atmosphere, while Barry Sonnenfeld provides fabulous cinematography (several years before becoming a director himself, of such titles as Men In Black and Get Shorty). The dialogue crackles thanks to the Coens' wonderful script, with Joel himself taking the lone directing duties and turning in a masterclass of suspense and unpredictability. The only flaw – an extremely minor one at that – is the inclusion of a couple of thriller clichés. Most prominent among these is the way these films always seem to feel compelled to incorporate a 'shock' nightmare sequence and Blood Simple is no different, injecting a not-very-necessary scene towards the end where a dead character turns up in a dream to spook one of the others. Otherwise, the film skilfully avoids clichés, emerging a supremely absorbing, well-made and confident debut from two men who have spent the thirty years since giving us one brilliant film after another. If someone, somewhere, told the Coens to "start as you mean to go on", they certainly did just that, hitting the heights at the first time of asking with this quite wonderful little thriller.