Who would have expected Zhang Yimou to remake Blood Simple? This version is set at some unspecified point in China's feudal past, at an isolated noodle shop in the middle of a gorgeous desert, all sandy hills streaked through with veins of bright red and rich blue-gray.
The story is as it was in the Coen brothers' original: A young woman married to an abusive older man has taken a lover; her husband hires someone to kill them both; things go horribly wrong. But the tone is rather different. Not to suggest that the Coen version wasn't funny -- like much of their work, it had moments of vicious dark comedy -- but the comedy in Zhang's version is much broader. It's a highly stylized take on slapstick, and there are scenes with everyone sneaking from room to room in the middle of the night that have the comic energy of great farce.
The movie does a delightful job of balancing that wild humor with tension and suspense, and the four central performances are top-notch. (I could have done without the bucktoothed buffoon who plays the principal supporting role, though; he was a bit too broad even for this movie.) Highly recommended.
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