Dan Hedaya and Frances McDormand in "Blood Simple."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Frances McDormand and M. Emmet Walsh Director: Joel Coen Rated: R, with strong violence and profanity Length: 97 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(July 28, 2000) -- If you arrived late to the quirky Coen brothers -- probably with Fargo or Raising Arizona -- you now have a welcome opportunity to travel back to the beginning.

Blood Simple, the audacious 1984 film debut by director-writer Joel and producer-writer Ethan Coen, is back on the big screen.

Dark, violent and perversely funny, Blood Simple tells a film-noir tale of betrayal, lust, revenge and murder in a dusty Texas town.

Marty (Dan Hedaya), the owner of a roadhouse bar, and Ray, a bartender (John Getz), are both in love with Marty's wife.

The film marks the brothers' first association with actress Frances McDormand. She's Abby, the film's classic femme fatale, the woman whose sex appeal triggers nothing but trouble for all concerned.

McDormand eventually married Joel and has starred in several Coen films since. (She won an Oscar for Fargo.)

And Blood Simple spotlights one of the slimiest characters in modern film -- the sweaty, disheveled private eye, Loren Visser, who attracts flies and the viewer's scorn with equal intensity. He's memorably played by M. Emmet Walsh, in the defining performance of his career.

From the get-go, Blood Simple demonstrates the originality, warped sensibility and bravura filmmaking that have marked nearly all Coen brothers films.

From the tracking camera that hops over a sleeping drunk at the bar to the shocking "whomp" of a rolled-up newspaper that hits the screen door at a moment of high intensity, Blood Simple is rousing, immensely clever entertainment.

Note, too, that much of the film is accompanied by a jukebox rendition of the Four Tops classic It's the Same Old Song, which perfectly underscores the eternal-triangle theme of this dark tale.

Actually, the song is a key reason we're seeing Blood Simple back in theaters. Copyright problems kept the tune off earlier video editions of the film, so the Coens were determined to acquire the rights for a later edition.

They then decided the film also needed polishing, so they went to work on a new edition. And they took the opportunity to trim a few brief moments off a couple of scenes.

Thus Blood Simple is labeled a revised "director's cut" of the film. (In truth, little has changed from the original; but it has never looked or sounded better.)

And with a giant wink to their fans, the Coens have added a mock-academic prologue in which "noted film preservationist Mortimer Young" introduces the restored version. But like so much else in the Coen oeuvre, it's a joke.

Blood Simple is often credited with launching the 1980s and '90s wave of American independent cinema. But that credit belongs much more to John Cassavetes and John Sayles.

However, the Coen film did demonstrate that independent cinema didn't have to be profound, realistic or self-important. Blood Simple is pure genre filmmaking and delightful fun, with little or no serious subtext.

The lesson was not wasted on Quentin Tarantino, who followed in the Coens' bloody footsteps with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.