Explicit remake of the Coens’ Blood Simple, set in the barren Chinese backcountry, and in period: the titular pistol is “the latest technology.” The costumes are colorful, the image bright and clear, and director Zhang Yimou, always with an eye for splendor, makes a big wow of spinning out the noodle dough from a disk the size of a Frisbee to one the size of a coffee table. Yet he plays this James Cain-ian tale of infidelity, greed, double-cross, and murder as straight-out comedy, with cartoonish overacting and even cartoonish visualization: the cross-eyed cop, the rat-toothed menial. In the process he pushes you away more than pulls you in. With Sun Honglei, Yan Ni, Xiao Shen-Yang, Ni Dahong. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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