A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop
(aka A Simple Noodle Story, Amazing Tales: Three Guns)
2009; directed by Zhang Yimou

After directing several big-budget historical epics like Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower, as well as coordinating the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Olympics, Mainland art-house darling Zhang Yimou returns to something a little closer to his roots with A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, a remake of the Coen Brothers' debut, Blood Simple.

Besides changing the setting from modern-day Texas to ancient China, the story in Noodle Shop remains much the same as when the Coens premiered Blood Simple in 1984. A wealthy businessman (Ni Dahong) finds out from a policeman (Sun Honglei) that one of his employees (Xiao Shen-Yang) is having an affair with his wife (Yan Ni). The cop is looking for a bribe to keep his mouth shut, but the businessman has a more interesting and profitable proposition: kill his wife and her lover. This plan seems simple on the surface, but a gun that the wife has just bought for her protection throws a twist into the proceedings.

Zhang's version of the story loses a bit of the black humor and noir touches that punctuated Blood Simple. It's stuff that seems old hat now with the rise of American independent cinema over the last twenty or so years, but really stood out against the films of the day-glo cocaine-hangover-induced mainstream US cinema of the 1980's. But Noodle Shop is still a well-made and compelling thriller, and one could even say it's a bit ballsy by Mainland cinema standards. In a country that has government-controlled censorship that mandates even the "proper" Mandarin accent actors must speak with, having a character like a morally ambiguous cop and an end that doesn't try and wrap everything in a pretty Communist-friendly bow is something that warrants notice.

Ultimately, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop probably isn't going to change anyone's notions (whether real or preconceived) about Mainland Chinese cinema. It's nothing (pardon the phrase) revolutionary, and, since the movie is based on a picture that was pretty quirky and dark to begin with, it doesn't really have the east-west crossover appeal of something like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. But after a couple of weeks where I've had to review some of the worst stuff to ever rear its' ugly head on this site, it was refreshing to watch a film where the director knew what he was doing and obviously cared about the final product.

RATING: 7

Blu-ray Information

Released by Sony Pictures Classics, the US Blu-ray maintains the label's high standards of quality. The Blu-ray is uncut from the Chinese version, running about 89 minutes. The picture is 2.40:1 1080p and looks great for the most part, with a solid Mandarin 5.1 soundtrack. The disc is packed with almost two hours of behind the scenes featurettes, most of which are actually fairly interesting. If there is one complaint to be leveled at the Blu-ray, it's the Sony commercial and several trailers that auto-play when you insert the disc, causing it to take a couple of minutes to actually get to the main menu.

The Blu-ray and DVD are available at Amazon.