We had no idea what we were in for back then, but the film truly did announce the arrival of two major talents.
Comment
04/08/03
Blood Simple (1984)
97
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:61
Fresh:59
Rotten:2
Average Rating:8.2/10
Synopsis: When a bar owner discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife, a complex web of deceit and double crosses ensues in a small Texas town. The Coen brothers' first picture is... [More]
Starring: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh
Director: Joel Coen
Reviews for Blood Simple
Taut, quirky, and jump-out-of-your-seat scary...
04/08/03
The Coens' complicated sense of the surreal is consistently entertaining, down to the fleeting, oddball cameos and distinctly weird scripting.
05/14/03
[Blood Simple] reinvigorated the classic film noir style and lent a credible face to the burgeoning independent film movement.
04/08/03
The Coens’ trademark aloofness works to perfection in Blood Simple because only the audience has a bird’s eye view of the action.
04/08/03
Joel and Ethan Coen's spooky tale is still fresh today! They truly opened the door for low budget, intelligent, slow moving films; that real people banter, believable situations all delightfully twisted around a dreamlike state.
04/08/03
The script is so tight you can feel it screwing into the back of your neck.
04/07/06
Watch this film, and these film makers, closely. Neither will disappoint.
10/13/09
The Coens remain fastidiously indifferent to the plight of their creations, the better to concentrate on the dazzle of their doom
11/15/09
Blood Simple is so derivative -- of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain and a thousand and one noirs -- that who or what is being ripped off is essentially beside the point.
04/08/03
It tells a story in which every individual detail seems to make sense, and every individual choice seems logical, but the choices and details form a bewildering labyrinth in which there are times when even the murderers themselves don't know who they are.
04/08/03
Top CriticBlood Simple is a good mystery, both crafty and clever, but never really exceeds satisfactory.
01/01/00
From the get-go, Blood Simple demonstrates the originality, warped sensibility and bravura filmmaking that have marked nearly all Coen brothers films.
04/08/03
Blood Simple isn't bad, just self-consciously poky and austere -- a James M. Cain homage, rural-art-film division.
07/23/07
An amazing, ironic debut thriller.
04/08/03
The pace can at times be a touch slow, but it's easy to see why the Coens allow certain scenes to simmer, especially when their actors are chewing up the screen as they do.
04/08/03
A deadpan gothic thriller best described as the steamy, hardboiled fiction of Jim Thompson and James M. Cain filtered through two film-school brats.
08/07/08
As good as it is on its own merits, the film works as the Coens' announcement of themselves to the moviegoing world.
11/12/02
It’s certainly not a bad film, but it’s hardly the classic reinvention of film noir that it wants to be.
04/08/03
From first shot to last, the Coens seldom miss an opportunity to suggest that theirs is a movie made by evolutionarily advanced life-forms touring a primitive planet.
04/08/03
Latest News for Blood Simple
July 29, 2009:
Zhang Yimou Remakes Blood Simple 
Sony Pictures Classics has announced plans to distribute the latest film from director Zhang Yimou -- a remake of the Coen brothers' 1984 "Blood Simple." More...
June 26, 2009:
Weekly Ketchup: Adam Sandler joins The Zookeeper, David Fincher joins Facebook
Most of the entertainment media's attention is focused on the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, but there were still interesting film development news this week,... More...
November 07, 2007:
Total Recall: Welcome to Coen Brothers Country
Before expanding wide on November 21, No Country for Old Men (90 percent) will play in select cities this Friday riding a wave of huge expectations. The Cormac McCarthy-based... More...
February 02, 2006:
Coens Aim to Tackle New "Country"
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Joel & Ethan Coen's next film will be an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men." Word is that Tommy Lee... More...
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