The Coen Brothers' Blood Simple

Remember that great scene in Twelve Monkeys when our heroes hide out in a movie theater? They're watching Vertigo - the hero fondly remembers watching this film as a kid. He recognizes that while the movie seems to be different somehow, it hasn't changed at all. You've changed.

When Joel and Ethan Coen unveiled their indie film noir, Blood Simple, on an unsuspecting world back in 1984, it completely blew my mind. I'd been reading my Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, so a story of cheating wives and stolen money inevitably leading to murder and missing bodies was right up my alley.

Blood Simple

What's more, the Coen Brothers had cooked up the cinematic equivalent of "Captain Billy's Whiz-Bag" hurling as many cool setpieces, shots, images and memorable lines of dialogue as possible straight into my brain.

I adored those tracking shots along the seedy countertop of a bar (nimbly gliding over the body of a passed out drunk). I was enthralled by the perfectly composed, deep focus "Orson Welles" shots of everyman lead actor John Getz and angry husband Dan Hedaya, a fire disposal unit blazing in the background. The husband's dialogue crackles. "Come back on this property and I'll be forced to shoot you. Fair notice."

There's music and energy pulsing in every image, right from the confident tumbleweed long shots of empty Texas landscapes as character actor M. Emmet Walsh purrs, "What I know about is Texas - and down here, you're on your own." A pair of lovers drive through the rain as the credits flash across with each set of headlights that pass (before getting sliced away by the windshield wipers.)

This was the debut film from the Coen Brothers, showing a remarkable confidence with taking the tools of cinema and running free. They play with their audience - a killer shoots holes through a wall trying to blast his victim in the other room; a prolonged "bury the body which won't stop bleeding" sequence that rivals Psycho; the haunting music of Carter Burwell, which repeats and ebbs and flows like a glass of bourbon and a cigarette trailing smoke.

The Mechanics of the Plot

The characters, locations and situations are mapped out in the first few minutes. Sullen bar-owner Julian Marty (Hedaya) believes his wife, Abby (Frances McDormand, in her first screen role) is cheating on him. Every character feels a rarely spoken distrust of everyone entwined in the plot right from the get-go.