A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop - DVD

Film: Wang (Dahong Ni) rules his noodle shop with a hard hand. Neither his wife (Ni Yan), nor his employees have much to laugh about. To endure her husband's constant humiliation, Wang's wife takes refuge in an affair with chef Li (Xiao Shen-Yang). When she acquires a gun one day, the dream begins to grow within her to shoot Wang and elope with Li. Too bad Wang got wind of his wife's affair through waiter Zhao (Ye Cheng), and now he in turn hires mercenary Zhang (Honglei Sun) to murder the lovers. But Zhang, too, has plans of his own, which sets off a murderous confusion in which several of those involved will fall victim.

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is the Chinese remake of the Coen Brothers' first feature Blood Simple. Hero- and House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou has turned the gory film-noir homage into a visually stunning historical epic that scores points for its mesmerizing camerawork, great costumes, and top-notch sets. The story itself, which at its core has been only slightly altered, also works very well in this version.

What works only to a limited extent, on the other hand, is the humor. Here, Zhang Yimou just lays it on too thick at times. The oversized buck teeth of waiter Zhao, the extremely cross-eyed captain or the sometimes somewhat hectically delivered dialogues can hardly be called funny and don't really do justice to the high quality of the rest of the production. It might be that the film simply eludes the local viewing habits at this point and that those viewers who are more familiar with Asian cinema as a whole won't even recognize this as a weakness. For rather inexperienced viewers, however, some visual or content-related gags prove to be a small, but undeniable disturbing factor, which weakens the positive overall impression of this remake, which is in itself very original.

Below the line, however, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is still extremely entertaining and, above all, immersed in great pictures that gladly let you overlook some weaknesses. True, the original is clearly preferable to the remake here as well. But Zhang Yimou has done a good job of putting his own stamp on the well-known story and adding a few new sides to it. And that's exactly what makes this home cinema premiere: well worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: Since only a data-reduced press sample was available for the test, no rating can be given here about the final picture and sound quality.

Extras: Also the bonus material could not be sighted on the press DVD. Announced, however, are trailers and making of featurettes.

Conclusion: A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is a visually stunning remake of the Coen Brothers thriller Blood Simple. While Zhang Yimou's imagery is undoubtedly great, the humor of the remake seems to take some getting used to. Nevertheless: for lovers of Asian cinema and for all Coen fans who want to see the cult film of their idols in a completely different guise, definitely recommended!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp