Blood Simple

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Review added by
Stuart McLean

Certificate: 18
Running Time: 96 minutes
Retail Price:
Release Date: 07/11/2017
Content Type: Movie

Synopsis:
A stylish, imaginative and hard-boiled neo noir, Blood Simple announced the Coens as vital and distinctive new cinematic voices on its release three decades ago. Possessing all the characteristics that propelled the Coens to later success – razor sharp dialogue; a predilection for lethal and futile violence; ironic, fatalistic humour; and an inventive focus on the tragicomic lives of idiosyncratic misfits.

M. Emmett Walsh is sleazy Texas private eye Visser, hired by bar owner Marty (Dan Hedaya) to kill his unfaithful wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover (John Getz). Given a plan to work from, he decides to modify it without warning; and matters quickly spiral out of control.

Beautifully shot and performed and with a haunting score by the Coens’ long-time collaborator Carter Burwell, it’s a landmark film, a trailblazing, near virtuosic debut which reinvented the noir for a new generation and marked the arrival of two filmmakers who would go on to revolutionise the American indie cinema scene.

Special Features:
New interview with Joel & Ethan Coen
New interview with M Emmett Walsh
New interview with John Getz
Criterion interview with Frances McDormand
Investor trailer
Intro by Mortimer Young
Video interview with Frances McDormand produced by the Criterion Collection © 2016 The Criterion Collection