X
- 1985
- R
- 1 h 39 m
- 1985
- R
- 1 h 39 m
Summary Deep in the heart of Texas, a sleazy bar owner suspects his wife of having an affair and hires a private detective to confirm his suspicions—only to have the crosshairs turned back on himself. [Janus Films]
Directed By: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Written By: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
- 1985
- R
- 1 h 39 m
- 1985
- R
- 1 h 39 m
Blood Simple
8.0
Where to Watch
Summary Deep in the heart of Texas, a sleazy bar owner suspects his wife of having an affair and hires a private detective to confirm his suspicions—only to have the crosshairs turned back on himself. [Janus Films]
Directed By: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Written By: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 33 Critic Reviews
84
91% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
6% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 33 Critic Reviews
84
91% Positive
30 Reviews
30 Reviews
6% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
The brothers instantly demonstrate their knack for coaxing beautifully offbeat performances from their actors, too; Walsh in particular is delectably sleazy, speaking his lines in a sneering Texas drawl that makes every word sound as if it’s turned rancid. And then there’s Carter Burwell’s score—his very first—which lacks the grandeur of his orchestral work in later Coen films like Fargo, but manages to evoke a palpable sense of dread with a simple piano theme. Insofar as their name signifies an aesthetic, the Coen brothers were fully formed right from the get-go.
As black, sinful and nasty as a weekful of Hitchcocks, this is as fresh and intoxicating now as it was back then. In a word: deadly.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 131 User Ratings
8.0
84% Positive
110 Ratings
110 Ratings
11% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
5% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 131 User Ratings
8.0
84% Positive
110 Ratings
110 Ratings
11% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
5% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
This is one of my favorite directorial debuts in cinema history. Possibly even my favorite. Everything I love about Coen brothers movies that's in this movie is perfected here. The snappy dialogue, the graphic violence, the sharply drawn characters. Everything about this movie is awesome. One of my personal favorites ever made.
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BLACK humor, abundant originality and a brilliant visual style make Joel Coen's Blood Simple a directorial debut of extraordinary promise.
As good as it ever was, and improved slightly by hindsight, experience, and extra cash.
Intriguing, clever, and often surprisingly funny there's plenty to please in this thriller, that remains fresh and original.
If you can handle its horror-comic grotesquerie, you'll find an enormous amount of cinematic imagination at work.
It’s so derivative that it isn’t a thriller—it’s a crude, ghoulish comedy on thriller themes. The director, Joel Coen, who wrote the screenplay with his brother Ethan, who was the producer, is inventive and amusing when it comes to highly composed camera setups or burying someone alive. But he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the actors; they give their words too much deliberation and weight, and they always look primed for the camera. So they come across as amateurs.
Blood Simple. 1984 ★★★★
Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Blood Simple.” is an astonishing thriller. Both on a visceral level and on a written one. The characters and plots seem to double back on themselves multiple times in a logical way, and that is what I think is the secret to its total success. It’s the type of thriller every character does something in front of the audience that seems the most logical, but with each character doing their own thing, things become complicated, and we know and remember who knows what, not because we can know what is happening, but because we want to know.
It should be a compliment to any filmmaker anywhere to know your audience wants to know what its characters know, but even then, somehow, someway, “Blood Simple.” is exceptionally interesting. It’s not a long film, running only 99 minutes, but the movie is kind of one long situation, in three different paths. One involves a Private detective, the girlfriend and her lover. The story is about a cheating wife, whose husband pays a private investigator to watch over her. Once he knows for sure, he makes the decision for him to murder his wife, along with her lover. But things don’t go smoothly. At all. It’s times like these I’d rather not reveal more of the story. But believe me, the story unfolds in an incredibly entertaining way.
The movie is also a neo noir I assume, but the movie is jam packed with rich, superbly quirky dialogue and ingenious plotting that it doesn’t have time to show off its high tech lush camera. But you do see some great light Technics in a bar, the cinematography is not showy, it only does so to be amusing for the audience to know that the filmmakers know what they are doing. It’s kind of a trust thing, confidence in the audience is giving to the filmmakers to try to impress their audience, but sooner or later, they need a story. And boy does “Blood Simple.” have one. It’s utterly fascinating, every character is given rich and dynamic lines that you’ll want to repeat to yourself after the movie’s over.
The best performances of the movie, by the way, are great. Especially from Dan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh. Hedaya is the kind of actor who doesn’t understand humor, and is always serious, no matter how awkward things get. And Walsh is a very peculiar one. Saying things and laughing as soon as he kills someone. That’s fascinating to me. And “Blood Simple.” has characters like that. Don’t miss it.
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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.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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I guess if you lived in a small Texas town where watching the water tower rust is a big nightly thrill then "Blood Simple" might seem worthy of high praise. Myself, I found it to be dull. Very dull. The characters all seem a bit dull too, both in the sense of being uninteresting as well as just a bit dense or stupid. The plot structure is less a peeling away of the onion than a series of misadventures in which things get progressively worse, which is usually what happens when a bunch of stupid, dense stupid leap to conclusions based on scanty evidence and then refrain from clearing things up through the use of some obvious dialog. The final scene is just the slightest bit exciting, but the question is whether it's worth sitting through 90+ minutes of relative boredom to get there. I would say catch a few episodes of Seinfeld.
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this is possibly the worst waste of time i have ever had the pain to endure. it’s just five hours of pure, unadulterated dog feces. oh wait- it’s only an hour and a half? i stand by what i said. i have absolutely no clue as to what demographic this movie is for. it’s boring, depressing, and so predictable it hurts. i created an account SOLELY to post this review.
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Awards
Film Independent Spirit Awards
• 2 Wins & 5 Nominations
Fantasporto
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Sundance Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
