Blood Simple
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Synopsis
From the celebrated filmmaking team of Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Raising Arizona), comes this visually stunning tale of a double-cross-and murder-in a small town. When the owner of a backwoods bar hires a man to kill his cheating wife and her boyfriend, he opens a door into the criminal world that he'll never be able to shut. Blood Simple hurtles forward with the speed and intensity of a fired bullet...and delivers as devastating an impact as has ever been felt from a noir film!
Picture 7/10
The Coen brother’s first film, Blood Simple, comes to Blu-ray from MGM and Fox in its original aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 on this dual-layer disc in a new 1080p/24hz transfer.
After putting up with Universal’s less-then-par DVD (a single-layer disc with a splotchy, artifact laced transfer) this is quite a revelation. Though there can be a little bit of a haze over medium and long shots the image overall is fairly sharp and close-ups present some significant details in the actors’ faces and clothes, and the film’s grain structure appears to remain intact, getting a little heavier in places. Blacks are pretty strong with some minor crushing apparent in a few sequences, and colours pop nicely. But while it may be a little brighter than what I’ve been used to previously on home video it still retains the film’s darker, grittier look.
The print is in excellent condition with only a few minor specs here and there. In all we get a fairly filmic presentation and it’s the best I’ve yet seen it.
Blood Simple - Screen Captures
Audio 7/10
The lossless DTS-HD 2.0 track is sharp and effective. It’s not an overly loud film but the sound design can be very creative in subtle ways and the track represents it well. Dialogue is sharp and clear and music fills out the environment nicely. Nothing comes off muffled, mild sound effects coming off quite sharp themselves, and there isn’t any discernable noise in the background.
Extras 3/10
MGM carries over the supplements from the Universal DVD, though they’re unfortunately all gags pulled off by, I would assume, the Coen brothers.
The film begins with an Introduction by Forever Young Films founder Kenneth Loring, who informs the viewer that this is the director’s cut of the film, cutting out all the “boring parts.” It’s a gag (which you can skip) that sort of leads up to the audio commentary by Loring. Forever Young Films isn’t real and I can only assume Loring is also not for real. The commentary track is a spoof track, taking aim at stuffy scholarly tracks. When I first listened to it on the DVD I felt something was off about it and this was confirmed when Loring goes on to state that the opening sequence was shot in reverse and upside down. As we go on he makes wild claims about the production, including that Rosemary Clooney was to be cast in either the Dan Hedaya or M. Emmet Walsh role (I’m not entirely sure which), how the original cut of the film played out (which goes on and on) and how it was cut up because of Bulgarian studio heads (or something.) He also refers to the characters with wild names or simply calling them something like “the grumpy man”, seems to get entire plot points wrong, and at times I swear he’s talking about another film. He has plenty of stuffy things to say (he has a fetish about faces and wishes for us to admire them) and shares bizarre anecdotes, and goes on weird personal tangents that have nothing to with this film, instead having to do with, as far as I can figure, commentaries he did that were deemed unacceptable for Merchant/Ivory films (and it concludes with him getting his ass handed to him by Nick Nolte.) It’s amusing at first but gets old really fast. Worth listening to but once you get sick of it it’s probably best to turn it off.
The disc then closes with the theatrical trailer.
In all it’s a bit of a waste for me, and they might as well not have included the commentary since I’ve never been truly fond of it. But I’m sure there will be those that will be happy it’s still here.
Closing
The idea for the commentary is “cute” but it gets tiring and I wish there were some actual supplements on here. Still, the presentation is sharp and makes the disc an easy recommendation.
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