Yimou transports the story from rural Texas to colorful, vibrant Gansu province in China. Wang is an old noodle shop owner. A wealthy, perceptive man who figures out that his wife(she has no name in the story) is cheating on him with his wussy employee, Li. Tired of her cheating ways, he hires Zhang, a corrupt cop to kill them both. She's already bought a gun to protect herself. It should all go smoothly, but Zhang has his own ideas. Rather than killing the pair, he double-crosses Wang and kills him in order to gain access to his safe. Nothing goes quite as planned for anybody, and one simple act explodes into a cycle of violence that could consume everyone.
Struggling to maintain a consistent tone throughout is perhaps the biggest problem the film encounters. Blood Simple surely had it's moments of dark humor, but here it's completely traded away for a few canned bits of slapstick. The comedy clashes violently with the need to portray the Coens' level of brutality. Sometimes it works, like when one of the two comic relief characters meets a particularly gruesome end. It can be jarring. Other times it falls totally flat, and undermines the seriousness of the situation.
With The House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower under his belt, you know that this is going to be one beautifully shot film. This'll probably be the only time you'll ever see a desert this lush and vibrant. Zhimou is one of China's most esteemed directors, but Noodle Shop lacks the overwrought melodrama of his previous works. Blood Simple is an example of film noir at it's best, minimal, sharp and to the point. However by bringing that story into Zhimou's popular wuxing style, it demands a more lively script. There's not enough going on to compliment the splashy array of colors. We're never really given a chance to figure out what each of these characters is about.
So celebrated in China is Zhang Yimou that he was asked to direct Beijing's part of the 2008 Olympic ceremonies. His production was a huge spectacle, with an ambitious theme surrounding our outward expression of conflict as a reflection of our desire for inner peace. He used to present such ideas in his films, too. Here's hoping he gets back to it at some point.
