Did you know that Yimou Zhang remade the Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple" in China? In some quarters it's known as "Yimou Zhang's Blood Simple" while elsewhere it has been rechristened "A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop". Yimou, of course, was at one time a director to be reckoned with, perhaps more famous internationally than even the Coens are now, (his "Raise the Red Lantern" is one of the masterpieces of world cinema), so we had every right to have had high hopes of this remake of what was a brilliant, if minor, Coen Brothers classic. Unfortunately, this is much closer to a black farce with none of the terror of the first "Blood Simple".
Visually it's a terrific looking film, which is as we might expect from its director. Few directors in the history of cinema have used colour as expressively as Yimou but there's no substance here. This is just a piece of pulp fiction Chinese-style with the comedy falling flat and the suspense singularly lacking. Today the Coen Brothers' film is now considered one of the great debuts in American film and it will be remembered as such long after this is forgotten.
