As nothing more than a curiosity piece Zhang Yimou’s newest film A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop demands attention. Throughout his career he has excelled at many types of storytelling though most notably minimalistic rural dramas (The Road Home) and over the top costumed extravaganzas (House of Flying Daggers and Hero) both of which have won him the adoration of critics worldwide and made him, without question, the most accomplished living Chinese director. Some would argue that his fame was only made possible through his full-throated support of the questionable Chinese government but his talents are undeniable and here he turns them towards the first ever remake of a Coen Brothers’ film, Blood Simple to be precise, their first and still one of their strongest.
The film opens as a traveling merchant is blowing minds in a small town by displaying his new toys: a gun and a cannon. A beautiful young nameless woman (Ni Yan), never having seen anything like it, takes the bait and purchases the gun. It’s soon revealed that she is married to a noodle shop owner named Wang (Dahong Ni) and that other than money she has no reason to stick around. She’s sparkly and shiny and kind to everyone. He, on the other hand, looks like Mr. Miyagi on opium. His teeth are literally rotting out of his head and as an added bonus he has a real knack for good old fashioned wife beating. The scuzziness he embodies is so pronounced, in fact, that it pretty much explains away her ongoing affair with the effeminate Li (Xiao Shen-Yang). Of course it is an affair that is soon discovered by Zhang (Honglei Sun), an officer of the law who happened to be passing through and wastes no time in bringing the indiscretion to the attention of her husband. Why Wang is at all surprised is left to our imagination but he quickly hatches a plot and hires Zhang to execute the fornicators . . . a job Zhang is all too happy to accept.
From there Yimou finds his footing and the plot really begins to hum. The characters are painted a little broadly for my taste but for this type of plot driven material they work just fine. Li seems to be there mostly to provide comic relief. His hyperactive anxiety is always present and always getting the best of him. It leads him, a relatively innocent man, into some crazy situations where he is severely compromised. Yimou contrasts that nicely with the stone faced and humorless Zhang who remains unflappable no matter how evil his motives or how dire his position. It’s fun to watch as he takes an opportunity for some ill gotten gains and tries to parlay it into a massive score, a plan that would’ve worked brilliantly had it not been for one annoying detail.
If possible the script (written by Jianquan Shi and Jing Shang) is even more barren than the one for Blood Simple was and yet its structure works beautifully as an exercise in audience manipulation. Take an ancient ghost town and its five remaining inhabitants, introduce a gun, then an outsider with a heart of coal and watch how quickly one unfortunate event can morph into a whole series of them. Veteran moviegoers (aka: the people going to see this film) are oftentimes so jaded that the only type of stimulation they can realistically hope for is intellectual. However, Yimou uses surprisingly crisp storytelling and flawlessly timed twists to squeeze real emotion out of his viewers. Sure, those dream sequences feel like dirty pool and he is remaking something that was already masterful in its own way but coming from a director known for the razzle dazzle this sharp, visceral experience may be his biggest accomplishment yet. For once I am genuinely interested in where his career is headed.
Director: Zhang Yimou
Notable Cast: Ni Yan, Dahong Ni, Honglei Sun, Xiao Shen-Yang
Writer(s): Jianquan Shi and Jing Shang
