If I may be fatuous for a moment, the Coen Brothers only make two kinds of movies: balls-out comedies with overtly verbose protagonists (think The Big Lebowski or O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and dark tragicomedies of an elaborate crime gone horribly wrong (Fargo is perhaps the seminal example, though we can't overlook their Oscar winner No Country for Old Men). [The Ladykillers tried to be both - and failed miserably.]Blood Simple, the first Coen Bros. vehicle, is most certainly an example of the latter.
When Marty (Dan Hedaya, who never seems to stop brooding) discovers that his wife Abby (Coen staple and wife Frances McDormand) is cheating on him, he hires private detective (or, in the parlance of our times, brother shamus) Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill her and her lover Ray (the slightly unsettling John Getz). Visser opts for a double cross, stages the death of Abby and Ray, and attempts a real murder - of Marty. But, in true Coen fashion, the best laid plans of mice and men... well, you know the rest.
As the first Coen Brothers film (and pretty much the last one of theirs I hadn't seen), there's a lot in here that seems familiar to a loyal viewer - or precursors of things to come in their cinematic canon, if we're taking things chronologically. It has the tangled plot and mystery angle of The Big Lebowski, the violence and crime-gone-wrong of Fargo, and the scenery and moral ambiguity of No Country for Old Men.
That said, it's not a particularly great film. The direction is interesting but lacks the polish anad overall flair that the Coens are known for. The plot, though intricate, never fails to hook the viewer's attention, relying on frustratingly terse characters who always seem to do the wrong thing and never really earn the audience's sympathy. And the pacing of the film is brutally slow at times, with a great deal of the film elapsing in silence. What dialogue there is isn't terrifically memorable.
For the most part (setting aside Walsh's performance for now), the acting (which is limited to only four important players) is restrained to the point of dullness. Almost everyone wears a mask of general unease on his/her face, but nothing truly comes of the unease, and there's no progression beyond that to show off acting chops that I know McDormand, if no one else, possesses. The notable exception here is Walsh, whose portrayal of ethically sketchy Loren Visser can rightly be called the first "Coen Brothers character" to join the ranks of The Dude, Anton Chigurh (who I suppose is more Cormac McCarthy than Coen), and Marge Gunderson. Each time Walsh is on the screen, he's riveting, leaving the audience guessing how and why he's doing what he's doing - and what exactly is he doing, anyway?
The plot and dialogue are not supremely memorable. A few plot twists - and dead people that won't stay dead - are good for a few "What the--?!" moments, and the Coens keep the violence at an evenly blatant level, just enough to unsettle and startle but not enough to wholly disturb. And the film is missing trademark Coen dialogue; I find myself unable to recall any good lines from the film, save the dramatic "I don't know what you're talking about, Ray" and Walsh's eerie chuckle.
These are the same guys who wrote The Big Lebowski? There are a few moments where I believe it, but for the most part Blood Simple is no Citizen Kane. As debut films go, Blood Simple is better than a few I can think of (the exceedingly dull Garden State, anyone?), but the Coens have done a lot better. Thank goodness for that. As a quaint "Oh look where they started. My, how far they've come, eh?" experiment, Blood Simple isn't terrible. But as a film standing on its own two legs?
The best, as they say, was yet to come for the Coens.
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