The director’s cut of the Coen brothers’ feature debut is not radically different from the 1984 original, though a 4K digital restoration is as good an excuse as any to revisit their most pleasurably lean film on the big screen. A revenge thriller set in a Texas town of saloon bars and deserts, it is a cornucopia of misunderstandings that start with a slimy, wheezing private eye (M Emmet Walsh) hired to murder a cranky barkeep’s (Dan Hedaya) cheating wife (Frances McDormand, luminous here) and her lover (John Getz). A tracking shot that slides smoothly along the surface of a bar; a white car parked hastily in the middle of a vast, lavender-hued field at dawn; a brilliantly simple set piece involving a man’s trapped hand… Blood Simple is a reminder that the Coens are formalist film-makers first, with keen noses for composition and taut, structured storytelling, as well as masters of black comedy.
