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Post date: Oct 4, 2020 2:32:16 PM
"Blood Simple" is the debut movie of the Coen Brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote, produced, and directed this movie with little film experience.
The movie is a crime drama involving a love triangle, a seedy detective and a pearl handled revolver.
I watched this movie on videotape and laserdisc. I didn't realize there was a director's cut where several things were changed. While watching the director's cut, I experienced a Mandela effect where I had expected to hear "I'm a Believer" several time through the movie. When I watched the movie the first time, it seemed like a joke where the filmmakers only had rights to one song so "I'm a Believer" was all of the character's favorite song they wanted to play. They also changed the detailed about the part of the movie dicussed below.
Here are two things I like:
On first glance, the plot seems to be "the Idiot Plot" as described by Roger Ebert. That is "The movie would be over if everybody in it were not a complete idiot. It brilliantly dodges this in conversation between the two men which sows mistrust against the woman.
There are some nice sound details. Marty, the bar owner, has a computer in his office which is constantly calculating something and beeping every few minutes. It is not mentioned but comes back later in the story a clue one of the characters and the audience. This was removed in the director's take. I find this very strange since it was a big clue to the woman that the person calling was not Marty and she didn't notice it because she went simple.
Here are three things I dislike:
According to wikipedia article of Blood Simple, the term is from Dashiell Hammett's story "Red Harvest". It is "addled, fearful mindset of people after prolonged immersion in violent situations" That term works for the three in the triangle but not for the detective. He had the most time to plan and the result is not very smart. After his monologue at the beginning, the viewer expected more.
The movie has a clunky piece of foreshadowing which doesn't help the story. A distracting cut-away to a gun which shows the number of bullets left, lets the viewer know this is IMPORTANT for later in the movie. When it does happen, it is unclear whether the film makers got it right. I discovered that this was corrected in the director's cut. However, the detail of having only one shot still doesn't seem to matter to the story.
The ending of the movie seems to change genre to a horror and it seems to last way too long. At this point, I was still rooting for the least idiot character in the movie. Again, they tighten this up and the movie flowed better.
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