Blood Simple review

            Before No Country for Old Men, before O Brother Where Art Thou, and before Fargo there was a film called Blood Simple. This is still one of my favorite films from the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, which says a great deal about their debut. From spectacularly inventive use of cinematography, a creative reinvention of the film noir genre to surprising twists, Blood Simple has a lot going for it. There are few films I have been as excited about having on high definition Blu-ray.

            With classic double-crossing twists that will have you double guessing the whole way through, I feel that only a basic plot summation should be enough. The film surrounds the violent outcome when the owner of a backwoods bar hires a man (John Getz) to kill his cheating wife (Frances McDormand) and her boyfriend. This is definitely a smaller budget film, a fact which only becomes clearer in high definition, but every dollar seems to have been stretched to its limit. There are some amazing moments in the film which rival anything which has come out of blockbusters in the last decade.

            The Blu-ray high definition does help to see some of the darker scenes, and the improved audio resolution makes the dialogue clearer. The special features are not altogether impressive, including only an audio commentary with Kenneth Loring and a theatrical trailer. Still, to see some of the final sequences in high definition makes the lack of features seem irrelevant.