Let’s just say that Zhang Yimou’s remake of the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984) doesn’t exactly strike the tone I would have selected for the topic matter, and film, in question. Re-imagining Blood Simple in Eastern terms, A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop takes place in a barren, to put it kindly, desert town in China, not far from the Great Wall, where the miserly, crabby old scrooge Wang (Ni Dahong) owns a noodle shop—if the old adage about business success being all about location is true, then how Wang became exceedingly wealthy eludes me—and lives with his far younger wife, played by Yan Ni (and oddly nameless).When he discovers that his unhappy-and-feisty wife is having an affair with his employee, the weak-willed—except when he’s tossing dough; you’ll see—Li (Xiao Shenyang), Wang hires the stone-faced policeman Zhang (Sun Hunglei) to murder the pair. But the plot thickens when Zhang’s greed gets the best of him, and mass killing, double-crossings, and multiple revenges of different levels ensue.

Like in Hero (2003) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), Yimou fills the screen with rich colors and vibrant images, like sweeping sand dunes and fiery sunsets. The problem is that what makes Blood Simple (which, in fairness, I haven’t seen in full in some time) so gripping is the smoky, nightmarish atmosphere that the Coens created. Here, Yimou’s overdone compositions lend a cartoonish quality to the proceedings that sap it of most of its punch. The first 30 minutes are particularly awful, as A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop‘s attempts to mix mystery with farce fall flat on its face. Blood Simple is full of tension, dry wit, and great acting…but Dahong isn’t Dan Hedaya, and in fact, only the graceful Hunglei turns in a truly strong performance here, with Shenyang eking out a passing grade. The remainder of the cast ranges from lame to irritating to flat-out bad. Obviously, this cinematic form was a conscious choice by the filmmaker, but I can’t help but feel that a Japanese director like Miike or Kitano could have done something much more interesting with the story (those who liked Chen Kaige’s The Promise, which I found unbearable, might really enjoy this one).

In its defense, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop gets a good bit more palatable after the aforementioned woeful beginning: once the first murder occurs, multiple long, extended wordless sequences frequently replace much of the unwelcome glitz, and the film settles into a moderately enjoyable flow, though it never comes close to living up to its potential, even though many scenes are taken almost exactly from the source material (though as we’ve seen in Gus Van Sant’s dreadful remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho, that’s anything but an automatic recipe for success). It feels to me like Yimou has lost much of his knack for nuance over the past 15 years—among his filmography, only Raise the Red Lantern (1991) contains much subtlety, and doesn’t use overcharged visuals to get much of its point across. He’s talented enough to keep most of his work from careening completely off the tracks—I’ve enjoyed most on some level or another—but this is the closest he’s come to a true failure. The final hour is adequate enough to prevent A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop from claiming that unfortunate title, but it’s not enough to salvage the movie into something I’d recommend to anyone but the most fervent fans of Yimou or the genre.

41/100

Though it occasionally pushes its patriotism motif too far (see: protagonist John Sims being born on the 4th of July, for starters) and would never pass for a subtle picture, King Vidor’s The Crowd is extremely successful in all other ways, particularly in its strong portrayal of a full circle self-realization, love story, and sweeping portrait of America. The Crowd was filmed a few years before the Great Depression, but nevertheless has a distinct feeling of foreboding, with its broken dreams and endless uphill climbs. It tells the story of Sims (James Murray), a small-town boy who moves to the bright lights of New York in search of the great American Dream. Vidor establishes the contrasts of Sims’ roots with the Big Apple’s overwhelming throngs, using a downward shot of John cautiously coming up the stairs just after his father has died—indicative of the strong likelihood that, despite his high hopes, John will remain small—and an upward-facing shot of the skyscrapers a few moments later as thousands of pedestrians briskly stride by, confirming how easy it is to get lost in the shuffle. Further evidence of what will become The Crowd‘s overarching theme abounds. John dreamily stares at hit-it-big contest advertisements for motor fuel, wishing for a way to avoid being a nobody forever. His office, a sprawling floor of identical desks and men in suits, is the epitome of mundane: this is drilled in when, after a typically slavish day, four co-workers pass John in the company washroom and ask if he’s “scrubbing up” in four slightly different variations in the span of about 45 seconds. This somber scene symbolizes the life that John dreads for himself: the same people, doing the same banal things, day after day after day.

Once settled into his mundane city routine, John eventually meets Mary (Eleanor Boardman) on a double blind-date with ambitious co-worker Bert (Bert Roach), and quickly proposes and takes her for his wife. It turns out, however, that married life doesn’t cure his ills: in fact, it enhances them in many ways. As he stagnates at work, his long-promised raise always “delayed,” Mary’s family begins turning on him, and tension starts to build at home. They almost separate, but Mary becomes pregnant, which gives John a jolt of motivation and spark to stay. But alas, it’s merely a temporary reprieve. For every seemingly positive step forward—John actually winning a slogan contest; an $8 raise at work—there’s two steps back. Then tragedy strikes, and The Crowd throws everything that’s happened so far into a darker, sadder context. Reminders of John’s limited impact on the world run rampant, such as a policeman telling him that the world can’t stop because of the tragedy. When the quote, “The crowd laughs with you always, but will cry with you only for a day” flashes across the screen, it feels startlingly appropriate, and Vidor’s depiction of the heartbreaking occurrence and its subsequent impact on John and Mary is really very sad to see. John begins to blame everyone around him for his woes, quitting his job and bouncing around new ones until even Mary, who’s been a rock throughout the turmoil, begins to snap. John’s refusal to accept a reluctant job offer from Mary’s brothers is the last straw in her tolerance: it becomes as evident to her as to us, the viewers, that John is, was, and always has been all talk and no action.

As a shattered John staggers towards a town bridge in a daze, prepared to end it all, it’s difficult not to commiserate with his misery, thanks to Vidor’s excellent script and direction (though the aforementioned lack of subtlety occasionally makes the proceedings feel unnecessarily excessive—it’s hard to find a five-minute stretch without some reference to America’s place as the land of opportunity and heartbreak). While it’s easy to dismiss John’s tragic arc as self-made, it’s just as easy to view is as nothing more or less than human nature working its wonders (or lack thereof). When John—inspired to live one final time by a last-second appearance from his son—swallows a pride and takes a job as a walking advertisement for a store, it conjures up an earlier sequence when Bert, during the double date where John met Mary, sees someone dressed in identical garb, and quips: “I bet his dad thought he’d be president.” The evolution of John’s character can be neatly summed up by these two bookend scenes: it’s no longer about bravado and an ultimately meaningless sense of pride, but about the bottom line—supporting his family, and making sure he doesn’t lose Mary forever. Being lost in the crowd may not be anyone’s dream, but it’s also not the end of the world.

73/100