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China, Hong Kong · 2009
Rated R · 1h 35m
Director Zhang Yimou
Starring Sun Honglei, Xiao Shenyang, Yan Ni, Ni Dahong
Genre Comedy, Drama, Thriller
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Wang is an avaricious noodle shop owner. His wife is involved in a secret affair with Li, one of Wang’s employees. Unbeknownst to them, Wang is watching their every move. He bribes patrol officer Zhang to murder the illicit couple. It seems like a perfect plan: the affair will come to a cruel, bloody but satisfying end… or so he thinks.
Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen brothers' "Blood Simple" as a Chinese period thriller-farce in a desert setting. A high-rolling but garish production with untranslatable regional ribald humor, it is aimed squarely at the China market.
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
The result of Zhang's experimental theater will be a rich brew for some, weak tea for others - a divide that will largely depend on your taste for a blend that is lighter on the subtext and heavier on the slapstick.
Western audiences familiar with "Blood Simple" will get a kick out of the reinventions.
Though it's a stylistic change from what Zhang's been up to lately, this isn't entirely new territory for him.
Taken on its own fun-over-philosophy terms, this is an exercise in tone-shifting virtuosity.
As "Blood Simple" fans should expect, Noodle Shop is a comedy of presumed deaths and unexpected revivals, with some victims flat out refusing to stay in their shallow graves.
In its most tiresome moments, Noodle Shop overestimates the wit of its formal exertions, and feels less like a film than an exercise that will leave fans of the original comparatively cold.
Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton
Those with a higher tolerance for bumptious jestering-from a yipping and mincing Xiao, or Cheng Ye as a bucktoothed jelly-belly-may, however, cry Masterpiece. They are instructed to seek out the longer Chinese cut, which apparently packs in more such interminable shtick, broad as the Yangtze.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
I wish I could say that the film is half as intriguing as it sounds, but A Woman, a Gun... lacks the Coen brothers' precision, their diabolical game-board cleverness. It's a remake in shaggy outline only.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Some may enjoy the slapstick, which plays like "Harold & Kumar Go to Old Peking," but this bloodless Coen crib job is simply not my cup of noodles.
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