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Grade: A-

Verdict: Simply smashing after all these years.

Details: Starring Dan Hedaya, Frances McDormand and M. Emmet Walsh. Directed by Joel Coen. Rated R for violence, sex, nudity and language. 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: "Blood Simple" is back in all its devilishly degenerate glory. Re-released in a spruced-up but still-smirking so-called director's cut (see article below for details), the movie is pretty much exactly as it was when it originally hit theaters in 1984. That is, a good-old-boy gothic full of flashy camera angles and trashy people.

The setup is the sort of thing that would ring bells for the postman. Marty (Dan Hedaya), the owner of a down-and-dirty Texas watering hole called the Neon Boot, suspects his younger, sexier wife (Frances McDormand) of having an affair with his younger, sexier bartender (John Getz). So he hires a wheezily sleazy private detective (M. Emmet Walsh). His plan, however, changes from catching them in the act to having them killed. Things get tricky--and trickier--when the private eye turns out to have a few plans of his own.

The result is a corpse-strewn black comedy that marked the dazzling debut of the brother act Joel and Ethan Coen, who've since attained a kind of household-name notoriety for their particular brand of cocky quirkiness. If you've seen their Oscar-winning "Fargo," you know what I mean.

What's astonishing about "Blood Simple" is how much of their unique talent was evident from the start. In a strange way, this movie could be the blueprint for the later, more polished "Fargo."

The great joy of "Blood Simple" is that, for all its delirious impudence and film school showiness, it's so clearly a movie made by guys crazy about moviemaking. And crazy about it in a way you didn't see much of in the mid-'80s. There's not an unimaginative shot in the piece. Yet, unlike so many filmmakers with a gift for dynamic visuals, the Coens don't neglect their story. It twists and turns with the playful perversity of a Hitchcock thriller that has collided with "Tobacco Road"--a kind of numbskull redneck noir that Homer Simpson might find himself ensnared in.

The actors hold their own as well. The moronic level of Marty's manipulations is signaled by Hedaya's cliched open shirt and gold chains. Getz is dumb, devoted and, relatively speaking, vaguely decent, while McDormand is a classic whisper-voiced trailer-trash tramp, right down to the dust between her painted toenails.

Best of all is Walsh, whose garbage-dump soul somehow just naturally draws flies. Decked out in a pale yellow leisure suit (like the yellow snow mothers warn their kids to steer clear of) and drenched in a perpetual greedy sweat, he gives a performance as luridly playful as the Coens' camerawork. He also shares their blood lust. Be forewarned--this movie gets very, very messy.

But that's all to the good, especially when you consider that something like "Pulp Fiction" wasn't even a buzz in Quentin Tarantino's head when this movie opened. Brimming with cinematic self-assurance, head-spinning technical virtuosity and flashes of cruel yet irresistible humor, "Blood Simple" is still an occasion for blood, sweat and cheers.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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