Blood Simple

Joel and Ethan Coen\u2019s career-long darkly comic road

trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled

neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases a

torrent of violence with one murderous thought. Actor M. Emmet Walsh

looms over the proceedings as a slippery private eye with a yellow suit,

a cowboy hat, and no moral compass, and Frances McDormand\u2019s cunning

debut performance set her on the road to stardom. The tight scripting

and inventive style that have marked the Coens\u2019 work for decades are all

here in their first film, in which cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld

abandons black-and-white chiaroscuro for neon signs and jukebox colors

that combine with Carter Burwell\u2019s haunting score to lurid and thrilling

effect. Blending elements from pulp fiction and low-budget horror

flicks, Blood Simple reinvented the film noir for a new

generation, marking the arrival of a filmmaking ensemble tha!