A Chinese-language remake of the Coen Brothers masterpiece Blood Simple sounds like the kind of thing you'd only see in the States in the form of a pirated DVD or maybe some weird revival house screening late one night. But when the film is made by Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed director behind House of Flying Daggers and Hero, it demands a bit more attention. So Sony Pictures Classics, the studio speciality arm perhaps better than any at picking up foreign films, will be releasing the untitled film.
In a press release, SPC's co-founders Michael Barker and Tom Bernard said “The idea of a remake of Blood Simple as seen through the eyes of Zhang Yimou’s masterful visual elegance and clever narrative twists is genius." The film will now be set at a noodle shop in the middle of the Chinese desert, rather than a bar in Texas. The plot will still follow a man's plot to kill his wife and her lover, gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Zhang's films have been known in recent years for their lush, almost insanely sumptuous visuals, and while the Coens have been known to have a cinematographic trick or two up their sleeves, Blood Simple--their first film-- wasn't really their most visually dynamic. That seems to be the biggest chance Zhang can offer the story, which is as twisted and brilliant as any the Coens have brought us since. Who knows if Zhang can get the same kind of Stateside acclaim when he ditches martial arts to take on an American story, but I'm at least dying to see how this turns out.
