Blood Simple remake nothing like original

File this under: did we lose something in the translation? Chinese director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Hero, House of Flying Daggers) has almost completed his remake of the Coen brothers’ first pic, Blood Simple. Depending on the source, the film is variously titled Amazing Tales: Three Guns, Three Shots and The First Gun. Even more confusingly, it bears only the slenderest resemblance to Blood Simple.

The locale has changed from modern day Texas to a noodle shop in the desert in ancient China. Further, as Yimou says: “We have added a lot of things and changed the whole feeling (of Blood Simple)... we brought in a lot of comedic elements and changed the relationship and personalities of the characters."

So, ummm – what remains the same? This is rather tricky to pin down, though from what we can gather, there may be infidelity and bloodshed (though Yimou’s film will obviously share these characteristics with almost every other movie ever made). So why bother with the homage at all? It would seem that Yimou is just a big Coen brothers fan and Blood Simple is one of his favourite films.

Here’s the trailer. Not in a thousand years would I have connected it with the Coens or Blood Simple. What do you think?

The film was made for $11.7 million and completed ahead of schedule. Here’s a rather wonderful account of audience reactions to an early cut of the film, from Chinese cultural site Danwei:

Three Shots calls itself a comic thriller, but the comedy section only makes up one-fifth of the film and it remains to be seen how its laughs will test out with audiences. One member of yesterday's audience told this reporter that the first fifth of the film did have lots of laughs, the best of which came during a cameo by Zhao Benshan. A group of men and women suspected of improper activities were hauled out of an inn and forced to squat at the base of a wall. Then Uncle Benshan, decked out in period costume, walked casually over and said in all seriousness, "Our chief task now is to gain a grip on behavior problems." At this, all of the cinema heads in the audience erupted in laughter.