Blood Simple

This hugely impressive debut feature from Joel and Ethan Coen is a brilliantly cast, highly stylised modern noir. Immediately showing its hand, the film opens with a beautiful scene, with two characters talking in a dark car at night, viewed from behind. We glimpse their faces only as headlights approach and pass. It sets the tone for a film that is built around the characters never quite seeing the full picture.

M. Emmet Walsh is the sleazy private eye hired to kill a debutante Frances McDormand, the cheating wife of bar owner Dan Hedaya, and her lover John Getz. A spate of twists and excellently scripted misunderstandings follows, as the body count mounts, and the characters are each pushed through their own private hell.

The acting is excellent throughout, especially the vivid, droll performance from Walsh, who is truly disgusting and yet mesmerising in his own way. McDormand's character emerges from the wreckage in the state described in the title - that of a childish simplicity into which those immersed in violence slip.

Indeed the central premise of the original script appears to be the emotional and psychological chaos that is formed in violence. The Coens' juxtaposition of this tumultuous idea with the calm, almost stately direction is intoxicating, and the film intelligently builds to a deeply satisfying, subversive and highly original conclusion.
4/5