Blood Simple

In the first film of brothers Joel Coen and Ethan Coen , M. Emmett Walsh plays Visser, an unscrupulous private eye hired by Texas bar owner Marty ( Dan Hedaya ) to murder Marty's faithless wife Abby ( Frances McDormand ) and her paramour, Ray ( John Getz ), one of Marty's employees. But Visser is no more up-front with Marty than with anyone else; he makes some slight modifications of the original plan so that it better serves his own best interests. After a surprise double-cross and the murder of one of the important players, matters spiral out of control, and the plot gyrates through a complicated string of darkly humorous events. False assumptions, guilt, and fear all lead to a frantic attempt to conceal evidence and the heart-pounding, irony-filled denouement. Blood Simple was re-released in the summer of 2000 with a digitally-remastered soundtrack and — at the Coens' behest — a few minutes of dialogue trimmed. — Hal Erickson