General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (三枪拍案惊奇; released internationally as A Simple Noodle Story) is a 2009 Chinese black-comedy thriller directed by Zhang Yimou and a remake of the Coen brothers' 1984 debut feature Blood Simple, transposed from 1980s Texas to a noodle shop in the desert of pre-modern northern China.¹^•² It opened in mainland China on 11 December 2009, runs 95 minutes, and was a commercial hit at home while drawing mixed reviews abroad.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title / English titles	三枪拍案惊奇; international title A Simple Noodle Story; US title A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop¹^•⁴
Director and source	Zhang Yimou; remake of Joel and Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984)²
China release	11 December 2009 (mainland), 95 minutes¹
Main cast	Sun Honglei (Zhang San), Xiao Shenyang (Li Si), Yan Ni (the wife), Ni Dahong (Wang Mazi), with Cheng Ye, Mao Mao, and a cameo by Zhao Benshan⁴
Chinese box office	Reportedly about US$32.4 million within three weeks of the December opening⁴
US release	September 3, 2010, Sony Pictures Classics; US gross $190.7K³
Critical scores	34% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (59 reviews); Metascore 57 on Metacritic³^•⁵

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The story keeps the skeleton of Blood Simple. In a small desert town near Jiayu Pass, the first pass at the west end of the Great Wall, the miserly noodle-shop owner Wang (Ni Dahong) lives with his young wife (Yan Ni) and his employees, owing them months of wages.⁶ His wife is having an affair with Li (Xiao Shenyang), a cook who can spin sheets of noodle dough but is timid outside the kitchen. She buys a pistol from a passing Persian merchant (Julien Gaudfroy) and presses it on her lover, insisting that only Wang's death can secure their happiness.⁶

Wang learns of the affair and the gun from informants among his own staff, then hires the corrupt patrol officer Zhang San (Sun Honglei) to kill the two lovers. Zhang has plans of his own, and the hired killing sets off a chain of misunderstandings, double crosses, and disputes over the shop's money.⁶^•⁴ The Taipei Times summary names the household as Wang Mazi, his wife, her paramour Li Si, an apprentice, and two servants, Zhao (Cheng Ye) and Chen (Mao Mao).⁴

The remake of Blood Simple

Zhang Yimou first saw Blood Simple about twenty years before making his version, at the Cannes Film Festival, in English without subtitles; he does not speak English, but the visuals and the central misunderstanding, in which the lover believes the wife has killed her husband when she has not, left a strong impression.⁷ After staging the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, he wanted a smaller, lighter project, and with no mature screenplay in development he turned to remaking the Coen film, whose remake rights he judged affordable.⁷^•⁸

In interviews Zhang described his aim as avoiding simple duplication: he expanded the misunderstanding at the heart of the original so that every character is caught in a web of mistakes, restaged the story in a noodle house, and added comic style and color drawn from traditional Chinese arts, including the compressed staging of Peking Opera.⁸^•⁹ He did not discuss the project with the Coen brothers, but after completion a producer sent them a DVD; they were surprised and reportedly liked the bucktooth character and the noodle-making scenes.⁹ The scholar Jonathan Evans, whose work on the film appeared in the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, analyzes the remake as both homage to and localization of its source, noting that it makes explicit elements left implicit in the original and translates the source's embedded robbery story into part of the remake's own plot.¹⁰^•¹¹

Production and casting

The film was made quickly and economically by Zhang's standards. According to a Sanlian Lifeweek report, it was shot on high-definition digital rather than traditional film, cost about 100 million yuan, and kept actors' salaries to about 20 percent of the budget.¹² The screenplay is credited to Shi Jianquan and Xu Zhengchao, with cinematography by Zhao Xiaoding, editing by Meng Peicong, and music by Zhao Lin; producers were Zhang Weiping, Bill Kong, and Gu Hao.¹³^•²

Casting for the domestic market. Zhang cast mainly Chinese television stars, with the notable exception of Sun Honglei, whose crooked policeman the Screen Daily reviewer found to give the film a welcome dose of chilly sarcasm.² Xiao Shenyang, then the most popular comedy star in China after his 2009 Spring Festival Gala appearance, was joined by fellow errenzhuan stage performers Mao Mao and Cheng Ye; errenzhuan is a folk art form from northeast China combining storytelling, singing, dancing, and clowning, and its gags and wordplay fill the film's comic stretches.⁴^•⁹ Comedian Zhao Benshan appears as a police captain.¹⁴

Release and reception

The film opened in mainland China on 11 December 2009 in a crowded holiday season and was a hit over the New Year period, reportedly earning about US$32.4 million in its first three weeks.¹^•⁴^•² It screened in competition at the 2010 Berlinale, where The Independent called it exhilarating and inventive, and reached United States theaters on September 3, 2010 through Sony Pictures Classics, grossing $190.7K.¹⁵^•³

Western critics divided over the film's tonal shift. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus says the broad reinterpretation struggles to bring anything new to the murder mystery and ladles on stilted comedy, and the Tomatometer settled at 34 percent from 59 reviews; the Metacritic metascore is 57.³^•⁵ Roger Ebert, reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times syndicate, found the oversaturated, wide-angle desert spectacle pictorially striking but the slapstick not to his taste.¹⁴ Positive reviews praised the same qualities: Time Out gave four stars and called it an exercise in tone-shifting virtuoso filmmaking built on Sun Honglei's stoic villain, while the Los Angeles Times described a comical re-imagining that ratchets up the farce and piles up the bodies.¹⁶^•¹⁷ Several reviewers noted the film's two-part structure, screwball comedy for roughly the first twenty minutes, then a tauter, darker thriller stretch, a split the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Slant Magazine both described.⁵^•¹⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026