Some thoughts on an august 1980s debut....from the Coen brothers...
An angry man goes off the deep end when he discovers that his wife (Abby) is sleeping with an employee. The man, Marty, hires a hit man, the diabolical Visser (who seems to share DNA with the chilling bad guy in "No Country for Old Men"). Visser's assignment is to bump off the wife and the boyfriend (Ray)--but Visser knows there is a better plan. If Visser kills Marty with the wife's gun, then the police will assume the wife did the crime. Visser can doctor a photo to persuade Marty he went ahead with his task, and then collect his money, "off" Marty, and disappear.
The problem is that Abby's gun goes missing, and this leads to a startling murder-via-premature-burial, a tense cat-and-mouse chase, and a final victory for Abby. Not one, not two, but three people wind up dead.
The bizarre series of coincidences and misinterpretations seems almost comical; more than anything, the plot reminds me of the deliberately chaotic black-and-white farce "Easy Living." The Coens also give us two memorable characters. There's the inexplicably sadistic Visser--who casually inflicts pain whenever possible, even by going into unnecessary detail about an adultery case with the actual anguished-and-cuckolded victim. Visser's response to all human sorrow is to laugh, and he does this even when he himself is dying. It's rare to see a character so cut off from understandable human feelings, and the Coen brothers smartly resist the urge to give us a backstory; they simply present us with this monster, and they allow us to grow to understand his depravity slowly, as he performs more-and-more-despicable acts.
The other great character is Frances McDormand's Abby, who does what she must to survive. She escapes her marriage, wiggles out of an abduction attempt, and finally executes her potential executor (in the movie's closing moments). Past actions are great predictors of future behavior--and, from the start, Abby just fights and fights and fights. We leave her exactly as we discovered her: doing what she needs to do to keep breathing.
Many movies follow a conventional "Hero's Journey" structure, and many movies try to give us charming characters. With "Blood Simple," the Coen brothers took "the playbook" and threw it away. It's unclear if they realized how radical their choices were. Don't expect warmth or conventional "Marvel"-esque satisfaction--but watch, anyway, for a fine display of intelligence and weirdness, and for an almost endless series of twists.
An angry man goes off the deep end when he discovers that his wife (Abby) is sleeping with an employee. The man, Marty, hires a hit man, the diabolical Visser (who seems to share DNA with the chilling bad guy in "No Country for Old Men"). Visser's assignment is to bump off the wife and the boyfriend (Ray)--but Visser knows there is a better plan. If Visser kills Marty with the wife's gun, then the police will assume the wife did the crime. Visser can doctor a photo to persuade Marty he went ahead with his task, and then collect his money, "off" Marty, and disappear.
The problem is that Abby's gun goes missing, and this leads to a startling murder-via-premature-burial, a tense cat-and-mouse chase, and a final victory for Abby. Not one, not two, but three people wind up dead.
The bizarre series of coincidences and misinterpretations seems almost comical; more than anything, the plot reminds me of the deliberately chaotic black-and-white farce "Easy Living." The Coens also give us two memorable characters. There's the inexplicably sadistic Visser--who casually inflicts pain whenever possible, even by going into unnecessary detail about an adultery case with the actual anguished-and-cuckolded victim. Visser's response to all human sorrow is to laugh, and he does this even when he himself is dying. It's rare to see a character so cut off from understandable human feelings, and the Coen brothers smartly resist the urge to give us a backstory; they simply present us with this monster, and they allow us to grow to understand his depravity slowly, as he performs more-and-more-despicable acts.
The other great character is Frances McDormand's Abby, who does what she must to survive. She escapes her marriage, wiggles out of an abduction attempt, and finally executes her potential executor (in the movie's closing moments). Past actions are great predictors of future behavior--and, from the start, Abby just fights and fights and fights. We leave her exactly as we discovered her: doing what she needs to do to keep breathing.
Many movies follow a conventional "Hero's Journey" structure, and many movies try to give us charming characters. With "Blood Simple," the Coen brothers took "the playbook" and threw it away. It's unclear if they realized how radical their choices were. Don't expect warmth or conventional "Marvel"-esque satisfaction--but watch, anyway, for a fine display of intelligence and weirdness, and for an almost endless series of twists.
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