The Coen brothers are truly a creative force not to be reckoned with, so, I figured I would go through each movie in their filmography and try to figure out how they do it. I’m starting here, with Blood Simple. The movie is overall quite generic. It does take a few liberties a bit later on, but for the most part, it sticks to the safe side. Especially in its slow nature, this is driven by the film only really having one plot-line, and one that was more or less mediocre. That isn’t to say that this film didn’t have things to like in it. There were quite a few shots in here, and cuts for that matter, that I found to be particularly impressive. All driving in the same theme of dealing with having a murder on your hands, and dealing with that guilt (making me think Joel Coen will do a great Macbeth.)
At the beginning, it felt like a very generic 80s crime movie. Down to the soundtrack and the acting, this just reeked of that style of film. Still, as I said, the film did present a few interesting twists later on. These were twists that felt somewhat surprising, while also making sense within the pre-established canon of the story. While these kinds of twists are hard to pull off, they almost always have a stronger reaction than a twist that throws something completely out of nowhere in, that completely does nothing for the sake of the story. Truly, that element is the only redeeming part of the movie. Other than that it’s more or less lacking in a lot of areas, which is to be expected with a directorial debut quite often.
Blood Simple is overall, a fairly generic flick. With many stereotypical beats that occur in this era of crime thrillers. However, the Coen brothers managed to make it worth watching in a sense through certain interesting shots and a few great twists. 7.2/10
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