Purely Joyful Movie!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This was where the illustrious career of the Coen Brothers began. Blood Simple has all the ingredients of the brother's style right from the small town setting to strange offbeat characters and a plot that cannot be predicted until the end credits start to roll. Featuring a young Frances Mcdormand this is one movie that you need to see if you want to start watching directors that are mainstream yet offbeat.

Joel and Ethan Coen seem as if they can do no wrong (I will admit that I have not seen "The Ladykillers" or "Intolerable Cruelty", but lets forget those critically panned least-favorites for now), even their earliest feature film is one of the most beautifully made, well scripted, and brilliantly structured movies I have ever seen! It's so unbelievably amazing that I have the urge to rewatch this masterpiece right now! It is seriously a genius work of cinema that combines the absurd with the shocking-a tour de force of thrills, chills, and, occasionally, laughs. It is quite important to mention the Coens' dark sense of humor and how it creeps into this film ever now and then. It may not always be present, but it is always possible that it will jump out and tickle the viewer at any moment.Practically ever single filmmaking aspect is done to sheer perfection. The characters are very interesting, even if they are rarely likable, and they are performed with perfection and intensity. The cinematography and haunting soundtrack also perfect the film on a technical level, and the screenplay and structure form an unpredictable and inventive masterpiece of the crime thriller.

Slow but even paced suspense yarn with a cleverly conceived and written screenplay which begins simple enough as a jealous husband's murder for hire plan to snuff out his cheating wife and her boyfriend. Each of the four players then must increasingly deal with what we the viewers know is their own individual mis-understanding of what exactly what has and is going on. To that add a sprinkling of entertainingly odd camera angles, good editing, and dark humor; and the murderous mayhem slowly unfolds in a very stylistically Coen Bros. manner. In what is almost a Coen Bros. touch in itself, the 1984 time period depicted is dead-on because - it's a 1984 film! Particularly enjoyed watching M. Emmet Walsh again, whose wonderfully quirky character actor chops are such a natural fit for a Bros. Coen script.

The story is awfully simple: Marty, a Texas bar owner and betrayed husband (Dan "Usual Suspects" Hedaya) hires the private eye to kill his unfaithful wife Abby (Frances McDormand) and her lover Ray (John "The Fly" Getz) who's also Marty's employee. The eye pretends to do the job and shows Marty some fake photographs showing the lovers shot dead in bed. He takes the money, then he shoots his hirer right away and disappears. Ray, who doesn't know about the detective's existence, discovers Marty's almost dead body. For him, no doubt: it's Abby who did this work... He takes him away in order to bury him far away from the bar, and finds out that Marty isn't dead yet. He's forced to bury him alive, offering us the most nightmarish scene of the film....The movie is a real visual and sound shock. The script is incredibly original and brings some freshness in usual cinema stuff dealing with unfaithful characters ready to kill each other in order to avoid all the difficulties linked to divorce. The ambiance and atmosphere is the ones of a real bad dream, a nightmare, and the fact that the story takes place in an early, gray place in Texas (don't miss the hilarious prologue), where everything weird can happen very normally, adds to it. And the soundtrack by Carter Burwell is extraordinary, this is what he did first and best for the Coen brothers. It captures everything of the movie and makes the nightmare become really true. All in all, "Blood Simple" is a very intriguing and suspenseful film, and totally entertaining. Highly recommended for a cold rainy night.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.