Blood Simple

<p>The set-up for <em>Blood Simple</em>, the Coen Brothers\' 1984 debut, is classic film noir as an unhappy married woman draws her husband\'s employee into adultery. Can murder be far behind? But while there are only hints of the loving irony with which Joel and Ethan Coen would usually handle Hollywood genres, <em>Blood Simple</em> twists the expected, <em>Postman Always Rings Twice </em>plotline into interesting, complicated shapes. The hard-eyed, tough-guy husband (Dan Hedaya) has feet of clay and the private detective (M. Emmet Walsh), full of homespun philosophizing, is an unredeemable scumbag. The husband plants a seed of doubt in the mind of his wayward employee (John Getz) about his wife (Frances McDormand), which would sprout into a weed patch of suspicion and confusion.</p> \n <p>Cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld (who later directed <em>Men in Black</em>) worked in many scenes to translate the visuals of film noir, a medium born in black and white, to color. The movie\'s strengths, however, were in editing and screenwriting. The new Blu-ray release follows the director\'s cut DVD of a few years ago by trimming a few minutes of running time, restoring their original choice of the Four Tops\' “It\'s the Same Old Song” for the soundtrack and prefacing the film with a mock intro by make-believe film historian Mortimer Young, the sort of endearingly pompous cineaste who hosted many public TV movie appreciation programs.</p>