It is middling Yimou at best.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 27, 2020

...the movie, unlike the majority of contemporary remakes, stands on its own as an original and surprising piece of work.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 6, 2011

A valentine from one director to a famous team of others.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 9, 2011

Doesn't live up to the 1985 Coen brothers film that inspired it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 18, 2010

It's a good effort, and any filmmaker about to embark on a remake should consider the director's boldness (Seriously, remaking Blood Simple?! You crazy for this one, Yimou!).

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2010

full review at Movies for the Masses

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Nov 20, 2010

There is certainly some curio value for cineastes here, but the real mystery is, well, what the heckfire was going through Zhang Yimou's once-brilliant mind when he decided to make this?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2010

An interesting interpretation but stick with the original.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2010

Heaven knows what inspired Zhang to undertake this nutty project, but the results are, at the least, amusing.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 22, 2010

A group of shrill, idiotic characters mugging for the camera in front of stunning desert landscapes.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 9, 2010

Eventually leaves slapstick behind to follow the pattern of cruelty and misapprehension established by 'Blood Simple,' but with arrows and sword thrusts replacing the earlier film's bullets, and stone-faced Sun Honglei as Zhang's MVP.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2010

A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop is a tipsy wedding of low hijinks and tiptoe-tense suspense stretches.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 5, 2010

Simultaneously frantic and dull, Noodle Shop has no hint of the restraint or meticulous concern with form exhibited in Zhang's earlier blockbusters.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 30, 2010

A whimsical but fizzled experiment.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 30, 2010

Zhang piles on his signature visual poetry, but he seems unsure of how to handle the relatively small-scale story.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 29, 2010

An uneasy mix of Coen-style laughs (particularly evident in the big comic close-ups) and Zhang's majestic imagery (in one shot the couple's divorce papers shatter into a burst of confetti).

| Sep 24, 2010

What sounds as though it ought to be delicious winds up, instead, a soggy noodle.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 24, 2010

The main problem with A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop has less to do with its fidelity to the Coen brothers' 1984 original than with director Zhang Yimou's own incompatibility with the material.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 24, 2010

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop is great to look at. It's just not much fun to watch.

| Sep 24, 2010

It's called A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop, and, although the woman and the gun are bores, the noodles are cool, I guess.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 24, 2010