Featured Movies
Partners
Blood SimpleThe cast was largely unknown and the budget, by later standards, low, but this first feature by Joel and Ethan Coen rightly established them as consummate stylists and exhilaratingly ingenious storytellers.
Julian Marty (Hedaya) is the jealous bar owner who hires scuzzy private eye Loren Visser (Walsh) to murder his wife Abby (McDormand) and her lover Ray (Getz). But when Visser embarks on a plan to fool Marty with mocked up photographic evidence, things spiral drastically out of control.
So begins a fantastically inventive, blood-drenched trip through smalltown jealousy, deception, murder and revenge. As has so often been the case with the Coens, it's a film that relishes the ambience of noir, but there's a deliciously ironic inflection in their approach to style, character and dialogue, while the plot operates according to a labyrinthine logic all its own.
Jet-black and efficiently paced, here are all the ingredients that would drive the brothers' future success: improbable death, itching paranoia, queasy comedy and, thanks to Walsh, a revoltingly brilliant portrayal of sleazy, sweat-stained villainy.
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