WAMG: Zhang Yimou, the Chinese director acclaimed for his arthouse martial arts epics (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) has followed up directing the Olympic opening ceremonies with a broad period farce in his newest, A Woman, A Gun, an A Noodle Shop, a mostly faithful remake of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Blood Simple (1984). The Coen’s debut thriller evidently impressed Zhang, who’s turned that story into a film that’s highly stylized but pointless. There’s been many American remakes of Asian movies but a Chinese redo of a Hollywood movie doesn’t come around often and I wish A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop had been a better one.
The director of 'Hero' and 'House of Flying Daggers' delivers an oddball dramedy about infedility, betrayal and a murder set in a small noodle shop out in the high deserts of China
EW: In the years since he broke through with art-house landmarks like the great life-under-Mao epic To Live (1994), the Chinese director Zhang Yimou hasn't just made movies — he's adopted aesthetic survival strategies, ways to reinvent himself under an artistically oppressive regime. With Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), he became a maker of slashingly balletic action pageants.
