Blood Simple

The first movie from Joel and Ethan Coen plays like film noir, Texas style. Double and triple crosses abound in a complex mystery involving a wealthy bar owner, his wife, the handsome bartender she's having an affair with, and the private investigator hired by the husband but harboring his own greedy agenda. John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh star. Director's cut; 96 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, French, Spanish.

The debut film of director Joel Coen and his brother-producer Ethan Coen, 1983's IBlood Simple/I is grisly comic noir that marries the feverish toughness of pulp thrillers with the ghoulishness of even pulpier horror. (Imagine the novels of Jim Thompson somehow fused with the comic tabloid IWeird Tales/I, and you get the idea.) The story concerns a Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a seedy private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) to follow his cheating wife (Frances McDormand in her first film appearance), and then kill her and her lover (John Getz). The gumshoe turns the tables on his client, and suddenly a bad situation gets much, much worse, with some violent goings-on that are as elemental as they are shocking. (A scene in which a character who has been buried alive suddenly emerges from his own grave instantly becomes an archetypal nightmare.) Shot by Barry Sonnenfeld before he became an A-list director in Hollywood, IBlood Simple/I established the hyperreal look and feel of the Coens' productions (undoubtedly inspired a bit by filmmaker Sam Raimi, whose IThe Evil Dead/I had just been coedited by Joel). Sections of the film have proved to be an endurance test for art-house movie fans, particularly an extended climax that involves one shock after another but ends with a laugh at the absurdity of criminal ambition. This is definitely one of the triumphs of the 1980s and the American independent film scene in general. I--Tom Keogh/I