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By Brian Lafferty
September 12, 2010 (San Diego)--A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop is not a bad movie per se but an unnecessary one. I could easily apply that label to a lot of bad movies but usually every movie, even the real stinkers, starts out conceptually with the best of intentions. This newest film by Yimou Zhang, a remake of the Coen Brothers’ film Blood Simple had no reason to be made.
Primarily because if you’ve seen Blood Simple, it is almost the exact same story, with a few minor changes and additions. This time it takes place in a remote Chinese desert town several centuries ago (in the opening scenes, a Persian sells a gun to one of the characters, which is treated as a novelty). You will know that the middle-aged, abusive noodle shop owner suspects his wife of cheating with a male employee and that he hires someone to kill them. Then, staying true to the source, things don’t go quite as planned.
Yimou Zhang is known for his sumptuous cinematography, which audiences have been treated to in one of his most well-known films, Hero. I was disappointed with the rather surprisingly standard photography in this picture. There isn’t a lot of color in either the exteriors or interiors. The majority of the film takes place at night. The images in these scenes are washed out and borderline murky. The events are discernible but the footage is merely dimly lit, lacking color. It isn’t impossible for such scenes to be shot well; Blood Simple’s nighttime exteriors were nicely photographed.
Zhang rarely makes the movie his own. He takes the basic plot and characters and transplants them to a new country and century. He does employ a few of his visual trademarks as in the noodlemaking scene in which the characters harness elaborate martial arts skills in preparing noodle soup, from making the dough to cooking it. At the beginning, the aforementioned Persian demonstrates a sword by slicing and dicing noodles into smaller pieces. During the climax, the killer shoots arrows at the titular woman which pierce bags of water and ropes holding china.
I longed for more shots like these and for more arresting visuals. Instead, the movie replaces them with flat attempts at black humor, most of which involve dead bodies. In addition, Zhang adds an unnecessary plot in which two criminally underpaid employees plot to rob their boss’ safe.
The film includes a recurring shot of ominous quick-moving clouds, which give the movie a gloomy atmosphere when it shouldn’t. I cite this visual motif because it symbolized for me that A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop fails to stand out on its own and that it resides under the shadow of the superior Blood Simple.
Can a Coen Brothers movie be successfully remade? Theoretically, maybe. But based on what I’ve seen here, it would be a Herculean task. As this film proves, the Coens are so unique and have a style so much all their own that sometimes even the most acclaimed directors of the world like Yimou Zhang can fail in remaking their movies.
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