This was the Coen Brothers first movie.\u00a0 Even in their first picture all of the Coen Brothers\u2019 tendencies are on full display.\u00a0 I have a love\/hate relationship with their movies and I\u2019m sure it colors all of my views but that is probably true of a very large part of their audience.\u00a0 The Coen Brothers are undoubtedly extremely talented movie makers.\u00a0 Their dialog, cinematography and actor selection are quite remarkable.\u00a0 But there is such a blackness, such a nihilistic core in their work that you always walk away shaking your head.<\/p>\n
The plot involves a married couple Julian and Abby Marty, played by Dan Hedaya and Frances McDormand.\u00a0 Julian owns a bar in Texas and when the movie begins his bartender Ray is driving Abby back from some trip.\u00a0 We quickly learn that Abby is not happily married to Julian and in fact Ray and Abby are about to stop at a motel for a sexual tryst.\u00a0 Unbeknownst to them Julian has hired a private investigator named Loren Visser (played by M. Emmet Walsh) who has followed them and is able to get pictures of Ray and Abby in bed together and provides these to Julian.<\/p>\n
After some violent encounters between Julian and the lovers he hires Visser to kill them for $10,000.\u00a0 When Julian returns from an alibi fishing trip Visser meets him at his office and hands over some pictures showing Ray and Abbey in bed with blood spattered on their bodies.\u00a0 Julian secretly steals the photo and hides it in his safe while taking out the $10,000.\u00a0 When Julian hands over the money Visser takes out the small caliber gun that he somehow stole from Abby and shoots Julian in the chest and leaves after throwing the gun on the ground.<\/p>\n
Now we find out that the death photos of Ray and Abby are fakes.\u00a0 Ray shows up at the bar and finds Julian shot in the back-room office.\u00a0 But when he sees Abby\u2019s gun, he assumes she shot Julian.\u00a0 He decides to dispose of the body.\u00a0 He puts it in his car and drives out into the farmland surrounding his town.\u00a0 While stopping on a road to look at a plowed field as a possible burial location for Julian, he discovers that Julian is not quite dead yet.\u00a0 He has crawled out of the car and is inching down the road on all fours.\u00a0 Ryan agonizes over running Julian over with the car or banging him in the head with a shovel but because of an approaching truck he just drags him back in the car and heads onto the field.<\/p>\n
He digs a grave and puts Julian in but as he begins to bury him Julian finds Abby\u2019s gun that Ryan has stuck in the assumed dead man\u2019s coat pocket.\u00a0 He then pulls the trigger a couple of times but none of the chambers he tries has a bullet in it so Ray takes the gun from him and buries Julian alive.<\/p>\n
Ray returns home to Abby but he thinks she shot Julian and since he won\u2019t say what has happened, she is completely in the dark about Julian and is scared by Ray\u2019s strange behavior.\u00a0 They become suspicious of each other.\u00a0 Now Visser discovers that the doctored picture of Ray and Abby is missing and he decides he will have to kill Ray and Abby to ensure no one figures out his involvement.\u00a0 At this point all three protagonists are sneaking around in the same locales and the tension builds.\u00a0 Finally, Ray and Abby are holed up in his apartment and Visser comes to get them.\u00a0 Ray suspects that someone is out there and tells Abby to shut the light but she is a stubborn dope and because of this Ray takes a sniper shot to the back and falls down dead.\u00a0 Visser comes into the apartment and a game of cat and mouse develops between him and Abby that ends with a knife through his hand in a window in another room from the one he is standing in and him shooting holes in a wall to allow his other hand to enter the other room to get the knife out.\u00a0 It\u2019s bizarre to say the least.\u00a0 Finally, Abby retrieves her gun again and shoots Visser through the door of the room he is in.\u00a0 She still thinks it\u2019s Julian after her so she says, \u201cI’m not afraid of you, Marty.\u201d\u00a0 And Visser, lying on the floor, dying, says laughingly, \u201cWell, ma’am, if I see him, I’ll sure give him the message.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good lord, what can you say?\u00a0 The Coens revel in ordinary people becoming submerged in criminality and violence.\u00a0 There are never any heroes.\u00a0 There are only varying shades of black and dark gray.\u00a0 Visser is a twisted man but Julian is hardly better and Ray and Abby are impulsive fools who get swept along in the flood of hatred and greed.\u00a0 To say it is over the top would be an understatement unless we are putting the statement in the context of other Coen Brothers movies.\u00a0 Remember this was their first film.\u00a0 Later on, this movie would be considered a light hearted romp.<\/p>\n
But as a Coen Brothers movie it is a success.\u00a0 The plot bounces along from outrage to outrage and instead of reaching a satisfying conclusion the screen just goes black and the end-credits role.\u00a0 You have just been told a very disturbing crime story but it was effectively told.\u00a0 If you enjoy this kind of movie experience then you should watch this film.\u00a0 They do this very well.\u00a0 But please don\u2019t expect a happily ever after ending.\u00a0 There ain\u2019t no such thing in the Coen Brothers universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was the Coen Brothers first movie.\u00a0 Even in their first picture all of the Coen Brothers\u2019 tendencies are on full display.\u00a0 I have a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[2971,1587,2973,2972],"class_list":["post-13980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-blood-simple","tag-coen-brothers","tag-dan-hedaya","tag-frances-mcdormand"],"yoast_head":"\n