A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop

Director Zhang Yimou ("Ju Dou") burlesques the noir genre with this crazily operatic, screwball-comic variation on the Coens' 1985 film "Blood Simple." Here, the stingy owner of a noodle shop gets into hot water when he attempts to engineer the murder of his unfaithful wife. The deal he makes with a police officer fatally backfires, leading to an assortment of complex and hilarious reversals. Honglei Sun, Xiao Shen-Yang, and Ni Yan star. AKA: "A Simple Noodle Story." 90 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1, Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital Surround; Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese; featurettes. In Mandarin with English subtitles.