Susan Granger’s review of “BLOOD SIMPLE: Director’s Cut” (USA Films)
First shown at film festivals in 1984, “Blood Simple” was the first feature film by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who went on to make not only “Fargo” but also “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “Barton Fink,” “Miller’s Crossing,” and two of my favorites, “Raising Arizona” and “The Big Lebowski.” This is the newly restored and re-edited Director’s Cut of their stylish crime thriller, introduced by enigmatic Mortimer Young, a pseudo-film restoration expert who inanely informs us that this version takes advantage of technological breakthroughs made possible in recent years. It seems writer Dashiell Hammett originated the slang phrase, “blood-simple,” meaning the state of fear and confusion that follows the confusion of murder, as in “He’s gone blood simple.” So the grim, sleazy story begins in Texas, where a jealous saloon owner (Dan Hedaya) hires a cheap divorce detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill his wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover, a bartender (John Getz). But the detective gets a better idea….and I’m not going to tell you what happens and ruin the greed, lust, double-cross and betrayal plot if you never saw the original. So how does this so-called Director’s Cut differ? Not much. The running time is still almost the same, so whatever revisions were made are subtle. In fact, in the “New Yorker” magazine, Ethan Coen irreverently quips, “A pace that was once glacial is now merely slow. Scenes that were once inept are now merely awkward.” Nevertheless, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Blood Simple: Director’s Cut” still scores an 8, remaining an amazing, ironic debut thriller. I suspect its re-release is a marketing device to whet our interest in their new film, “O Brother Where Art Thou?” starring George Clooney, which will be released this fall.
