140 - Blood Simple

    A lady leaves her lover, to take things up with one of his employees.  The lover hires someone to kill both of them.  From there, things get more complicated.
    This was the first Cohen Brothers movie, and it shows a lot of where they were going.  But it isn't quite all the way there.  The pacing is slower, and the characters aren't quite as engaging.  There isn't nearly as much humor as there is in many of their other movies.
    As I said, the pacing is slower.  The movie very slowly ramps up, and has a very dreamy quality for a big chunk of the middle.  Then the last 10-15 minutes is really tense.  They have the same sensibilities about violence though.
    I don't think there's any deeper meaning to this movie though.  It's a noir-ish crime story, and it cheats a little bit, by having characters skip explaining things to each other.  I think I had one technical problem, and that's when a gunshot goes through a window, the entry point on the glass seemed awfully low for the perspective we have from the shooter.  The cast is interesting.  There's a young Frances McDormand, who shows up in several other Cohen movies.  And there's Dan Hedaya, who I recognized, but couldn't place.  He played Carla's ex-husband on Cheers!