Blood Simple (1985)

Pretty Good

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The whole thing did not make sense. The way everyone seemed to make decisions seemed extremely unlikely and far fetched without the necessary humor to make that work. I agreed with the reviewer who stated that one is unlikely to bury a body in an open field with a lit up house not far away. Especially with tire tracks leading to the scene. Then there is the matter of the husband who hires a sleazy detective to kill his wife and her lover. He is shot apparently dead, certainly bleeding a LOT, and we are supposed to believe he suddenly comes to life after hours of not moving and after hours of being dragged away from the murder scene in a car, all the while not moving? Suddenly he has the energy to get out of the car, crawl in the road, and start firing shots at the wife's lover to boot? and wait, he's dragged some more and dumped in a pit dug by the lover, and he is still alive enough to fire MORE shots? As for the leads, the lovers, how did these two ever get together? They tell each other NOTHING, explain NOTHING, and have no communication or affection of any kind in the whole movie. You really dont LIKE any character in this film, and for some that may not matter. It did to me. There is no humor to lighten this dark, depressing piece, and there was too much stupidity for me. Disagreeable and distasteful film. FARGO is a far superior film.

It really shows that this is the first film the Coen brothers made. While it is watchable, and some parts do becoming gripping, this ultimately is a film i have no desire to re-watch.The script is decent for the most part, but there are some of the cheesiest scenes that I've seen in a long time sprinkled in the movie. The themes of what is good, and what is right, money is the root of evil, and people in positions they are woefully unfit for are prevalent throughout this film. The characters are well written, and you understand all their motivations, however I find pretty much everyone in this movie to be quite bland, but that's probably because the acting is atrocious. The best actor in the movie bar none is M. Emmet Walsh. He is the only person in the movie that actually has fun with the role. Everyone else sounds like they are just reading off of a script from start to finish, and in a contest to see how serious they can sound. There are two stand out moments when Walsh has a scene with Dan Hedaya, and later Frances Mcdormand that features really good acting for the most part, and a sense of atmosphere, but that's really it.I was shocked when i saw that Barry Sonnenfeld was the director for cinematography because it's all over the place, it really feels like a mixed bag of sorts. There are a couple of good shots, some decent shots, and then some really bad shots. Like i said, it just jumps around all over the movie. You go from long continuous shots with an almost speed up pace, to drawn out scenes with jump cuts galore. The editing is pretty bad in my opinion.Like wise, i was equally shocked when i saw Carter Burwell made the music. I don't know what exactly he was thinking, but this soundtrack is laughable. It sounds like the music you would hear when you walk through the living room and your mom is watching one of those Saturday night LMN movies. It just does not work here at all to me.I do like the special effects they use. It looks very nice, and apart from one scene where it's very obvious that it's not blood, it works throughout the movie.This is something that i would expect to see as a made for TV movie from 1998, however as it was the Coen's first movie i wasn't expecting a masterpiece to begin with. I'm glad i can add this to my Watchlist, and i encourage anyone would loves the Coen's to see it, but i'll stick to their later, more refined works.

This is another "film noir" signed by the Cohen Brothers, who sign the direction and the script. One more on a sizable list, as they like the "noir" style and a clever twist of cynical irony. However, this film isn't new and I don't know to what extent it will age well, or it will turn into a minor work of Cohens' cinematography.The film has many interesting aspects, mainly in the most technical questions. Cinematography is very elegant and cleverly uses the light and shadow, high contrast, washed colors and car headlights. Although I don't have any data in my hands right now, I dare to hypothesize that they have used wide-angle lenses during filming. I'm just guessing. However, the main problem of this film is the script.The whole plot is based on a love triangle between Abby, her lover, Ray, and her husband, Marty, who decides to kill them, driven by jealousy, corrupting a private investigator to do the dirty work. But things end up going bad for Marty and everything gets complicated, as the plot gives several twists. The virtual absence of soundtrack, the focus on dialogue, the atmosphere of latent suspicion between characters and their moral ambiguity are characteristics that we can see, and that are usual in "noir" movies. This is all very good and would have been even better if there weren't problems in between: to begin with, the film takes too long to engage and arouse our interest. In fact, the beginning is too slow to have a significant initial impact. Dialogues can also be very boring. Finally, there is another problem: it is absolutely loaded with holes. If I were a CSI technician, it would have been the quickest and easiest criminal investigation of my career.About as the actors, I liked them overall, but I was not impressed. John Getz and Frances McDormand, despite being the main actors, didn't shined, doing only what they had to do. Dan Hedaya had the task of giving life to an obnoxious but fundamental character, and I liked his work. However, I think M. Emmet Walsh deserves more prominence than them. It's through the cynical and obtuse look of his character that we see the film (he works, partly, as a narrator) and it's he who assumes preponderance in the way events unfold, giving him a protagonism that would hardly have had if wasn't the case. The actor really struggled, so the character can almost be absolutely repellent by embodying, in a visual and palpable way, his dubious morality and lack of scruples.In short, this is an interesting worth-watching movie but may not please most of the audiences, as it's rather slow and takes it's time to develop. However, being one of the first Cohen's films, it's a milestone for their careers.

Whenever this film has come up in conversation, I have always said how good it is but barely remembering much beyond a wincingly tense scene involving a window, a crazy burial scene and the fact that the image was always very dark. That viewing must have been on some less than wonderful video because although most of the film is shot at night, it looks marvellous. Indeed, the visuals, the dialogue, the use of music, the pacing and the performances are near faultless. I still feel that burial scene is a bit too crazy but then allowing for the delirious state the main protagonist was in maybe it is fine, just not what any thinking person would choose to do. But no matter because it makes for great viewing, as does the entire film. There are moments when we do not know quite what is going on (and doubt the characters do too) but this is noir or at least neo- noir and that's all good.