An unlikely, unwieldy transplant of the Coen brothers classic Blood Simple to an indeterminate, dynastic domain of China, Zhang Yimou’s A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop follows its master with the tumbling, untroubled constancy of a puppy. There is novelty in Zhang’s fidelity to the blackly circumstantial clockwork of the Coens’ neo-noir plotting, set here in the phantasmagoric realm of a wuxia opera. There also emerges a nagging glibness that regularly gets the best of some inspired filmmaking. 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.
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REVIEW: Noodle Shop Stays Close to Coen Brothers Source, But Not Close Enough
