Blood Simple

Blood Simple; crime, USA, 1984; D: Joel Coen, S: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh, Samm-Art Williams, Deborah Neumann
Marty, the owner of a bar in Texas, hires a private detective to eliminate his wife Abby as a punishment for sleeping with Ray, his employee. But the plans of the revengeful husband soon become a farce when the detective eliminates him instead, while the couple gets plagued by doubt and fear. But since the detective forgot his lighter at Marty's bar and (mistakenly) thinks that Ray has it, he shoots him in his apartment. But Abby mistakes the detective for Marty and shoots him.

"Blood Simple" is the directorial debut by the Coen brothers that immediately caught them on right foot and proved to be a great contribution to their full, thoroughbred crime element. In this shining crime film, one of the best movies of the 80s, Joel and Ethan Coen faultlessly enjoy crafting a humorous film noir filled with irony and cynical touch, but such laughter can get stuck in the viewer's throat—since it's always dreadfully realistic. The violence is so stylized that it's neither attractive nor repulsing, the style, the esoteric mood—created thanks to the play with shadows and dimmed lights—and the "rudimentary" cinematic techniques (match cut from an employee lowering his index finger to press the button of the answering machine to Ray's index finger pressing the blood-stained car seat) are perfect, creating a fantastic fun, while the smooth surreal details just give another reason for pleasure. 

A gem of independent cinema. In later movies, the Coens tried to give even further contributions to the theme, but rarely ever repeated the magic feeling of this grotesque. There is a whole bunch of expressionistic scenes: Ray (Getz) painstakingly buries the half-dead, half-alive owner of the bar, thus the soil above him still moves, in an 15-minute sequence almost without any dialogues; in the suspenseful attempt of kidnapping the music becomes unbearably loud; Ray has an affair with the married Abby and her husband, Marty, calls him on the phone and asks him: "Are you having fun?" M. Emmet Walsh achieved the role of a lifetime as the sleazy detective Visser, who is one of the greatest cynical characters in cinema—almost every of his lines is a classic: in one particular, Visser presents to Marty the photo of his wife in bed, having an affair, and jokingly adds: "I know a place where you can get this framed!" It is amazing someone dared to finance this minimalistic independent film by the first time directors and then "nobodies", the Coens, but sometimes things just end up the way they should, since this overstretched, but delicious classic is simply meticulous.

Grade:+++