A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop

An initially perplexing, but ultimately engrossing, Chinese remake of an American neo-noir, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop closely follows the plot of the Coen Brothers 1985 suspense film, Blood Simple. But director Zhang Yimou, through inventive staging and an eye-popping use of color, deftly mixes screwball comedy with tense drama to tell his own version of the story of a feudal-era affair whose discovery yields devastating consequences. As events unfold over the course of one night in a lonely noodle shop deep within the Chinese mountains, the movie transforms into an unwitting game of cat and mouse that playfully employs two comedic sidekicks and classic noir foreshadowing. The landscape's monochromatic color scheme stands in stark contrast to the wardrobe of elaborate silks and rich jewel tones, and Sun Honglei, who plays the nearly mute antagonist, gives the film's most nuanced performance through his restrained facial tics and precise movements. The movie is filled with off-kilter wide-angle shots that highlight the insignificance of the human tragedy unfolding beneath the vast sky, a theme that is mirrored in the film's wafer-thin character development. While some of the more comedic elements are jarring at first, they serve as a refreshing break in what could otherwise be an overly dramatic thriller.