Nobody makes Coen Brothers movies as well as the Coens do, as we've seen on those rare occasions where another filmmaker tries their hand at directing one of their original scripts. Blown the Man Down, which serves as the feature debut for writing-directing duo Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, invites comparisons to the Coens' Blood Simple and Oscar-winning Fargo with its noir storyline and chilled-to-the-bone setting full of colorful characters. Yet, the reason it works as well as it does is because Cole and Krudy do what the Coens never have and craft a narrative where the women are not only the focus, but far more fascinating and morally complicated than their male peers. Armed with a truly feminine perspective, Blow the Man Down rises above being a Coen Brothers imitation to deliver a gripping and tightly-woven yarn.
The film takes place in Easter Cove, a small (and salty) fishing village along Maine's rocky coastline. There, sisters Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) and Priscilla Connolly (Sophie Lowe) have only just buried their mother and are still grieving the loss when Mary Beth - eager to put the town in her rearview mirror - inadvertently discovers Priscilla has been hiding the truth about their uncertain future. Enraged, Mary Beth takes off to a local bar and hooks up with a sketchy stranger (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) for a tryst that quickly takes a turn for the nightmarish. But as she and Priscilla scramble to cover up what happened, they stumble upon the dark secrets their mother and the other matriarchs of Easter Cover, like her old friend Enid Nora Devlin (Margo Martindale), have long been hiding.
Plot-wise, Blow the Man Down hews closer to a psychological thriller-mystery like Dolores Claiborne - another story revolving around the secrets and lies kept hidden by the women in a remote part of Maine - than Fargo or any other films by the Coens. It's the world and style that brings the latter's work to mind, from the movie's idiosyncratic touches (which includes a Greek Chorus in the form of a pack of sea shanty-singing fishermen) to the way it captures the distinct mannerisms and habits of the people from a particular region in the U.S. Drawing from their original script, Cole and Krudy keep their story's twists and turns coming at a brisk pace, yet still find room to dwell on the interior lives of their characters every so often along the way. While the overarching narrative is perhaps a bit thinner than desirable, Blow the Man Down errs on the right side and leaves you wanting to know more about Easter Cove's residents and backstory, as opposed to drowning viewers in exposition.
Helping matters, Blown the Man Down's eccentric players are brought to life by a wonderful cast of actors that includes Oscar-nominee June Squibb, Marceline Hugot, and Annette O'Toole, in addition to GLOW's Gayle Rankin as Alexis, a sex worker who gets caught up in the power struggle between Enid and the other women who've long kept Easter Cove running while the men are away working at sea. Martindale, as always, is commanding as the unscrupulous businesswoman, gracefully switching from shrewd-minded and threatening to comical or even sympathetic at the turn of a dime. In many ways, these matriarchs are more compelling than the younger women in their lives and their conflict threatens to eclipse the central plot thread involving Mary Beth and Priscilla. It's a testament to Saylor and Lowe's performances that they don't and the pair are believable as a pair of siblings (one reckless and inclined to wear their frustration on their sleeve, the other worn down from having long served as the "responsible" daughter).
Stretching what was clearly a tiny budget as far as it can go, Blow the Man Down makes great use of its wintery seaside color palette to paint Easter Cove as a fitting backdrop for its noir drama, making everything from the interiors of its houses to the fish cages on its docks seem ominous under the right circumstances. If it's not quite as atmospheric as similar films that've come before it, that might be as much to do with the limited funding as anything else. Todd Banhazl's cinematography similarly feels a little restrained by what it can and can't do given the available resources, but still adds welcome visual flourishes (like a disorienting camera pan or dramatic push-in) to heighten the suspense and tension wherever possible. All in all, Cole and Krudy prove their mettle as filmmakers in their debut and it will be exciting where they evolve as storytellers moving forward.
Shot in 2018 and having made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival the year after, Blow the Man Down deserves to find an audience after the long road it's traveled. In a turn of good fortunate, it will be widely available to check out this weekend when it begins streaming. For anyone in the mood for a chilled noir that both deserves to be referred to as Coens-esque and cleverly subverts the genre's conventions when it comes to gender, Blown the Man Down is very much worthy of a look. And if there's something comforting to be found in its story of everyday working-class people persevering under bleak circumstances, well, more power to it.
Blown the Man Down is now streaming on Amazon Prime. It is 90 minutes long and is rated R for language, some violence, sexual material and brief drug use.