| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
If you are squeamish, here is the film to make you squeam.
|
| 100 |
New York Post
Hannah Brown
It's like watching Alfred Hitchcock try to solve a Rubik's cube in a roadside diner.
|
| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
All in all, Blood Simple looks better than ever.
|
| 100 |
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
Filled with wonderful performances, especially by Hedaya and Walsh, Blood Simple remains a tight, beautifully ugly, neo-noir classic.
|
| 100 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Savor their technique and the sizzling performances of Frances McDormand as an adulterous wife, Dan Hedaya as her vengeful husband and M. Emmet Walsh as a private detective from hell.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
I love the movie's originality, its sense of macabre humor, its resourcefulness, and the great Walsh, whose memorable narration kicks off the movie.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
I love the unsettling details.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
As good as it ever was, and improved slightly by hindsight, experience, and extra cash.
|
| 88 |
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
It's the boys' most immediately gratifying movie: The goods are delivered in a hearse.
|
| 88 |
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
(The Coens have) never again achieved the one-two punch of Blood Simple and "Raising Arizona" - the first darkly cynical, the second light-headedly comical.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
This is not an inspirational drama about finding yourself; it's a Hitchcockian comedy about adultery, murder and losing a corpse.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Chris Barton
Don't miss this opportunity to see a film that many believe started the renaissance of indie films as it was intended to be shown.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Boldly facetious and monstrously clever.
|
| 80 |
TV Guide
Editor
The Coens' concern isn't emotional intensity but bravura camera moves and chic lighting of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Clever as it is, Blood Simple is derivative and self-consciously stylized.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
Ann Hornaday
Grisly, stylish and often weirdly funny, Blood Simple is a reminder of how rarely an original artistic sensibility is announced to the world and how much better movies are when that sensibility is allowed to keep going its own way.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
If you can handle its horror-comic grotesquerie, you'll find an enormous amount of cinematic imagination at work.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
Ernest Hardy
All these years later, the film is far more infuriating than it is exciting.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
It is an exploitation picture disguised as a hipster comedy.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Remains mired in a smart-alecky film-school sensibility.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
Manohla Dargis
On viewing, the cuts seem negligible, but what is new and clearly improved is the sound, which now booms with each door slam and gunshot.
|
| 50 |
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Revelatory and disappointing.
|
