Blood Simple

The reviews were right about this one: great visual style, great camera work, great promise. An auspicious debut. Here is a picture that sacrifices everything--and I mean EVERYTHING-for the great shot, and there are a lot of great shots. Almost every shot is a great shot. It is almost like a primer on directing tricks. So it is definitely worth seeing. The picture fails overall, however, because of what I think of as a lack of moral stance. It's more than just a shortage of sympathetic characters, the audience gets no clue as to which way it ought to view the characters' actions. Real film noir style, black humor, good use of gore (strange emphasis on emesis), and a good plot, except that it relies too much on failures of communication; the characters sit around, glance quizzically at each other, look at each other meaningfully, and then leave, having gotten the wrong message, when a three line conversation would have cleared everything up. This can be frustrating to an audience, even though I am sure it's part of the filmmakers' joke. We sit there wanting to yell out "Talk to each other for God's sake!" I'd rather see a more convoluted reason for confusion; plots shouldn't be one sentence away from clarification. Note: I saw this picture in a theater which had probably the rudest and loudest audience I have ever encountered, which didn't help.