Retrospective Film Review

Blood Simple (1984) • 40 Years Later — chaos, crime, and philosophy in the Coen Brothers’ dark debut

A Texas bar owner’s plan to kill his cheating wife and her lover backfires, leading to a chaotic series of misunderstandings.

There are few things certain in life. No matter how watertight the scheme or how foolproof the system is, the world can turn on its axis in an instant, tearing all the best-laid plans asunder. In Texas especially, chaos reigns. In the vast expanse of the Lone Star State, it doesn’t matter if you’re the President of the United States or the Pope of Rome — something can always go wrong.

And it all goes wrong in the Coen Brothers’ sensational cinema debut, Blood Simple. When bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) discovers that his wife, Abby (Frances McDormand), is having an affair with his employee Ray (John Getz), he hires Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh), a private detective, to murder them both. Unfortunately, Visser has plans of his own, setting off a chain reaction that soon falls outside anyone’s control…