Right out of the gate, the Coen brothers were making terrific movies, apparently. Blood Simple, their first film, is a tad slower than their later films, and the humor not quite so pronounced, but this was still a thorough Coen movie - not so bright people, horror, and humor.
This is a moody film noir piece set in Texas. It has the frequent Coen brothers’ theme of a planned crime that goes awry, and in addition is full of great plot twists and mistaken motives. Dan Hedaya was terrific in it, and I’ll never see him as Carla Tortelli’s husband again without getting the dry heaves. Frances McDormand was excellent, too.
I just love me a good movie. Tomorrow, another movie I’ve never seen: Chinatown.
I remember seeing that movie a few years ago when it was revived in the local artsy-fartsy movie theatres around here… what I remeber is it had a pretty good plot structure, surprised me a couple of times, and kept me highly entertained and full of conversation about it afterward.
It took me three tries to make it all the way through Blood Simple; I kept getting as far as the first scene in the hotel room and just gave up, bored. I didn’t force myself to watch it all the way through until after I’d seen Miller’s Crossing and became a total Coen brothers fanboy.
I wish I’d seen it sooner. It’s just brilliant. Similar in many ways to Fargo, but I actually like it much better. Probably because there’s not even a hint of Important Film around it as there was with Fargo; it’s just a solid, funny, truly suspenseful thriller. The scene with the paperboy was genius.
Did you happen to watch the DVD release with the commentary track on, pugluvr? It’s pretty damn funny.
I liked it, too, and I’m hard to please when it comes to movies. I first rented it a year or so ago and then caught it again a few days ago on one of the satellite channels. Funnily, I never watched Cheers but the day after I saw Blood Simple on the satellite I was switching through channels and went past Cheers, then had to back-surf when I caught a glimpse of Dan Hedaya!
(smiling)
You got a girl–am I screwing something up by being here?
It’s not so much that the humour isn’t pronounced, it’s that the Coens master mood to a point where a line like "Hey mister, how’d you break your pussyfinger?"doesn’t even get a snicker. That’s their way of telling us (after sober reflection) we’ve bought in unreservedly to the story.
