Critic Reviews
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Tom Long, Detroit News
Heaven knows what inspired Zhang to undertake this nutty project, but the results are, at the least, amusing.
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Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop is a tipsy wedding of low hijinks and tiptoe-tense suspense stretches.
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Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald
A whimsical but fizzled experiment.
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J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
An uneasy mix of Coen-style laughs (particularly evident in the big comic close-ups) and Zhang's majestic imagery (in one shot the couple's divorce papers shatter into a burst of confetti).
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Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail
A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is great to look at. It's just not much fun to watch.
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Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's all wrong. Each creative choice in the new version undermines the original film's appeal, a collision of incompatible visions.
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Enrique Buchichio, Uruguay Total
Es acaso un chiste cinfilo de parte de un realizador prestigioso? Un homenaje a dos directores talentosos y ampliamente consagrados? Quizs un poco de las dos cosas.
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David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews
...the movie, unlike the majority of contemporary remakes, stands on its own as an original and surprising piece of work.
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Jeffrey Chen, ReelTalk Movie Reviews
A valentine from one director to a famous team of others.
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Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
Doesn't live up to the 1985 Coen brothers film that inspired it.
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Simon Miraudo, Quickflix
It's a good effort, and any filmmaker about to embark on a remake should consider the director's boldness (Seriously, remaking Blood Simple?! You crazy for this one, Yimou!).
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Joseph Proimakis, Movies for the Masses
full review at Movies for the Masses
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Jim Schembri, The Age (Australia)
There is certainly some curio value for cineastes here, but the real mystery is, well, what the heckfire was going through Zhang Yimou's once-brilliant mind when he decided to make this?
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Simon Jones, Empire Magazine Australasia
An interesting interpretation but stick with the original.
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Sean Means, Salt Lake Tribune
A group of shrill, idiotic characters mugging for the camera in front of stunning desert landscapes.
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John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Eventually leaves slapstick behind to follow the pattern of cruelty and misapprehension established by 'Blood Simple,' but with arrows and sword thrusts replacing the earlier film's bullets, and stone-faced Sun Honglei as Zhang's MVP.
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Graham Killeen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Simultaneously frantic and dull, Noodle Shop has no hint of the restraint or meticulous concern with form exhibited in Zhang's earlier blockbusters.
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Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly
Zhang piles on his signature visual poetry, but he seems unsure of how to handle the relatively small-scale story.
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Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
What sounds as though it ought to be delicious winds up, instead, a soggy noodle.
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Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
The main problem with A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop has less to do with its fidelity to the Coen brothers' 1984 original than with director Zhang Yimou's own incompatibility with the material.
Read all 20 critic reviews
Featured Audience Ratings
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A cruel noodle shop owner offers a corrupt police officer money to kill his unfaithful wife and her lover but when he double crosses and murders him the hapless lover covers up the crime fearing his mistress responsible. I was very curious to see Zhang Yimou's interpretation of… More
A cruel noodle shop owner offers a corrupt police officer money to kill his unfaithful wife and her lover but when he double crosses and murders him the hapless lover covers up the crime fearing his mistress responsible. I was very curious to see Zhang Yimou's interpretation of the Coen brother's debut film, being a big fan of Hero and House Of Flying Daggers as well as the original in question. The story has a lot of potential for inventive adaptation and I was hoping for a Shakespearian Kurosawa style affair; unfortunately what Zhang has served up is more Stephen Chow than Akira Kurosawa. The grim details of the plot have survived intact but the cartoon characters in gaudy pantomime costumes stutter, pratfall and double take away like refugees from an episode of Scooby Doo making a very uneasy concoction of weak slapstick humour and bleak neo noir that just doesn't work. Stone faced Honglei Sun has none of the character of M. Emmett Walsh's sleazy private eye and all the suspense and sexual tension of the protagonists disappears in a puff of smoke when portrayed like a Carry On film. The final scene actually works quite well as it's a straight adaptation using swords and arrows instead of gunfire but this just serves to throw into sharp relief how ill-judged the rest of the film truly is.
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A remake of the Coen Brothers' <i>Blood Simple</i> that completely works. It transposes from 1980s Texas to ancient China. Smart, funny and enormously entertaining. It highlights how men become easily tempted by money, the root of all evil, when faced with… More
A remake of the Coen Brothers' <i>Blood Simple</i> that completely works. It transposes from 1980s Texas to ancient China. Smart, funny and enormously entertaining. It highlights how men become easily tempted by money, the root of all evil, when faced with bucket-loads of them, and how coincidences play a huge part in getting the characters where they end up, with each unfortunate moment ending in becoming a corpse (yes, there will be blood, and death) in a seemingly convoluted narrative that has to be seen to be believed the kind of rich writing which can pull it off.
It sure is a lot of fun delivered by its outstanding casting who seem all too comfortable in dishing out black and physical humour.
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I expected something like Kung Fu Hustle, crossed with Crouching Tiger, but what I saw was a very strange movie. The outrageous makeup, and unrealistic costumes, made this film almost unwatchable...A silly, slapstick remake of Blood Simple that was neither clever, or funny. Giving two… More
I expected something like Kung Fu Hustle, crossed with Crouching Tiger, but what I saw was a very strange movie. The outrageous makeup, and unrealistic costumes, made this film almost unwatchable...A silly, slapstick remake of Blood Simple that was neither clever, or funny. Giving two stars because it was beautiful, but no other redeeming qualities.
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The intriguing idea behind this oddity made it a gotta-see-it flick: Chinese remake of BLOOD SIMPLE set in feudal China. What the heck, right? But from the first frame, it's clear that the actual lens for the director is more RAISING ARIZONA than BLOOD SIMPLE. Yes, it follows… More
The intriguing idea behind this oddity made it a gotta-see-it flick: Chinese remake of BLOOD SIMPLE set in feudal China. What the heck, right? But from the first frame, it's clear that the actual lens for the director is more RAISING ARIZONA than BLOOD SIMPLE. Yes, it follows the basics of the plot, but it's so broad, so comic and ultimately so strange that it wears out its welcome much too quickly, and 90 minutes start to seem like 200. There is definitely some nice camera work (the director is no stranger to great composition - he gave us HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS), and there's a really nifty cooking-the-noodles sequence early on, but then it's just a slog from plot point to plot point, studded with moments that visually echo the Coen Brothers' earlier masterpiece (light pouring through holes in the wall? check... the killer's hand being immobilized gruesomely by the heroine? check... you get the picture). It's not that it's a mess, it's that it's kinda boring - which is both a crime and a shame.
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Serious tongue in cheek as Yimou Zhang remakes "Blood Simple", but sets it in China of the late 1800's. It translates well, and perhaps if Hollywood would take note and put some unique twists in their remakes as well, the film world would be a much more interesting… More
Serious tongue in cheek as Yimou Zhang remakes "Blood Simple", but sets it in China of the late 1800's. It translates well, and perhaps if Hollywood would take note and put some unique twists in their remakes as well, the film world would be a much more interesting place.
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