Blood Simple at 40: how the Coens set the standard for modern noir

Micro-budget thriller put the brothers on the map, laying the groundwork for a career filled with similarly dark stories of crimes gone wrong

The loathsome proprietor of a Texas bar slumps in his office chair after hours, seemingly dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. Another man tries to clean up the mess in an effort to cover up a crime that he mistakenly assumes someone close to him has committed. Only the blood isn’t wiped away so easily: it seeps into the hardwood. It streams from the victim’s nose and drips from his forefinger. An old shirt used an improvised mop soaks in much of a puddle, but leaves drippings like house paint on the way to the bathroom sink. Morally speaking, the whole ordeal represents a stain on the man’s conscience. But don’t overlook the plain fact that crime is a messy hassle.

That’s the defining sequence in Joel and Ethan Coen’s brilliant first feature, Blood Simple, and it may be the defining sequence of a career filled with amateurs who commit crimes of passion or conceive harebrained plots, but wildly underestimate how hard it is. Again and again in Coen brothers crime thrillers, we learn that human beings don’t die so easily and that impulsive acts of violence or ill-considered schemes lead to tragicomic ends. Think of the car salesman who has his own wife kidnapped in Fargo, the vain personal trainers who try to sell secrets to the Russians in Burn After Reading, or the welder who tries to slip away with drug money in No Country for Old Men. They either overestimate their resourcefulness or underestimate the potential variables. Whatever the case, they pay for their hubris.