{"id":19482,"date":"2016-03-16T12:57:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T02:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19482"},"modified":"2016-03-16T13:11:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T03:11:17","slug":"blood-simple-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19482","title":{"rendered":"Blood Simple [1984]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"bloodsimpleposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Joel and Ethan Coen
\nWriters: \u00a0<\/strong>Joel and Ethan Coen
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, John Getz, M Emmet Walsh<\/p>\nF<\/span>rom the very first shot of their very first film, the Coen Brothers show themselves to be remarkably self-assured film makers.\u00a0 Blood Simple<\/em>, a neo noir crime thriller and their debut feature, stands the test of time as one of the finest films in the Coen\u2019s formidable filmography.<\/p>\n

A bloody tale about a messy love triangle with ordinary people getting in over their heads, \u00a0Blood Simple<\/em> has many of the distinctive traits that would go on to become trademarks of Coen Brothers films down the road.\u00a0 A desperate man trying to dispose of a body in the dead of night is revisited almost shot for shot in Fargo <\/em>over ten years later.\u00a0 The ruthlessness of the mercenary for hire Detective Vesser paved the way for the monstrous Anton Chigurh who would appear twenty years later in No Country For Old Men<\/em>.\u00a0 The quiet sadness and wretched helplessness of the middle aged Julian Marty is the type of tragic figure we\u2019ve seen revisited in many Coen Brothers films since.<\/p>\n

Blood Simple<\/em> is a noir film that ranks up there with the classics of the genre during its golden era.\u00a0 The twisting, winding and tragic narrative is fuelled by the lust, greed and miscommunication of the players involved.\u00a0 At the centre of it all is Abby (Frances McDormand in her first acting role).<\/p>\n

Abby is married to Marty, the owner of a run-down saloon.\u00a0 She is having an affair with one of the bartenders Ray.\u00a0 Marty knows this and hires a private detective to bring him the proof.\u00a0 He takes on the services of the sleazy and cunning Detective Vesser.\u00a0 Once his worst fears are confirmed, Marty confronts Ray and tells him one day Abby will betray him too and tell him point blank to his face that she \u201chasn\u2019t done anything funny\u201d.\u00a0 After the confrontation, Marty decides to pay Vesser to kill Abby and Ray.<\/p>\n

Vesser has his own agenda.\u00a0 He figures that if he murders Marty, he can take the money from the safe in the saloon and wipe out the only person who knows about the hit.\u00a0 Two birds with one stone and all that.\u00a0 He steals Abby\u2019s gun to frame her for the crime.<\/p>\n

Only it doesn\u2019t work out quite so simply.<\/p>\n

Vesser shoots Marty point blank but fails to kill him.\u00a0 Then he accidentally leaves his lighter behind, making him traceable to the crime scene.\u00a0 When Vesser leaves the saloon, Ray is the first to discover the body and gun.\u00a0 He assumes this is Abby\u2019s handy work and finishes the job.\u00a0 When he confronts her about it later, she tells him she hasn\u2019t done anything funny.<\/p>\n

\"bloodsimple2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I love a good crime thriller such as this.\u00a0 Each act of desperation, each moment of misunderstanding leads to the next bloody moment.\u00a0 The story unfolds like a finely constructed Rube Goldberg system.<\/p>\n

Blood Simple<\/em> is a dirty and grimy pot boiler and that sense of uncleanliness permeates every scene.\u00a0 The film is a sensory experience in the grossest way.\u00a0 All the characters are drenched in sweat.\u00a0 There\u2019s an exchange between Marty and Vesser where a fly keeps landing on the Detective\u2019s forehead.\u00a0 The smell at the murder scene must be something else.\u00a0 Not only is the floor caked in blood, but there\u2019s rotting fish and milk on the counter.\u00a0 The violence in the film is unglamorous, protracted and wince inducing.\u00a0 Anyone who has seen Blood Simple<\/em> will surely remember the moment when Visser attacks Abby in the bathroom.\u00a0 He extends his hand out a window and into the adjacent room only for Abby to slam the window frame and spike the hand in its place with a knife.\u00a0 The sight of an anguished, bloodied and contorted Visser flailing on the spot is harrowing stuff.\u00a0 It\u2019s this sort of detail that makes Blood Simple<\/em> so memorable, despite its modest budget and production values.<\/p>\n

And what a cast.\u00a0 Dan Hedaya is a highlight as Marty.\u00a0 He is a deadbeat and a loser, betrayed by his wife and unable to catch a break.\u00a0 He tries to kidnap his wife but she fights him off by kicking him in the unmentionables.\u00a0 He\u2019s the kind of unlucky bastard who gets shot but doesn\u2019t die quickly.\u00a0 A guy who has a chance to draw a gun on his would-be killer but finds he doesn\u2019t have any bullets in the chamber.<\/p>\n

M Emmet Walsh made a career out of playing larger than life sleazebags and he\u2019s in fine form as Detective Vesser.\u00a0 Vesser is vile, predatory and unscrupulous.\u00a0 But he seems perfectly content with his lot in life and whistles cheerily in the face of anyone who tries to disrespect him.<\/p>\n

\"bloodsimple\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a film populated with scummy and desperate men, Abby is a fierce and unyielding presence.\u00a0 The film never judges her for leaving Marty.\u00a0 We never really get into her head.\u00a0 She is soft spoken and introspective, even in the drastic circumstances she finds herself in.\u00a0 But when she is pushed by the men around her, she pushes back.\u00a0 Hard.<\/p>\n

Judged on its own merits, Blood Simple <\/em>is an entertainingly grungy thriller that has the dark humour and enigmatic presence you\u2019d expect of a Coen Brothers production.\u00a0 Revisiting it today, it\u2019s a fascinating showcase of the talent and vision the duo had from their very first film and a sign of all the entertaining, absurd and colourful tales that they would go on to tell in the years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rich but jealous man hires a private investigator to kill his cheating wife and her new man. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1800,5],"tags":[2471,763,2474,2472,2473,2475],"class_list":["post-19482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-films","tag-blood-simple","tag-coen-brothers","tag-dan-hedaya","tag-frances-mcdormand","tag-john-getz","tag-m-emmet-walsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19486,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482\/revisions\/19486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}