Director Zhang Yimou’s remake of the Coen Brothers’ 1985 “Blood Simple” is summed up in its international title, “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.” While Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Blood Simple” was a neo-noir crime film set in Texas, this noodle story is set in a small desert town in the Gansu province.

Roger Ebert in his review of “Blood Simple” wrote that it “mixes those fears and guilts into an incredibly complicated plot with amazingly gory consequences.” Zhang’s movie is less gory and more chow mein Western and slapstick comedy.

It begins with a Persian merchant who speaks in mixture of Mandarin Chinese and English and performs with great flourish before four people, the leader of whom we later learn is Wang’s wife (Ni Yan). The Persian merchant sells her a gun and demonstrates a canon. The other three are her servants. All are garishly dressed, most notably Wang’s wife in green and Li (Xiao Shen-Yang) in pink. The other male servant Zhao (Cheng Ye) looks like the Chinese version of Baby Huey with a top knot of hair in the middle of his head, and the woman, Chen (Mao Mao), the Chinese version of Pippi Longstocking.

Wang (Dahong Ni) owns the noodle shop in question and it is more like a miniature fortress in a remote outpost than a humble hut at the side of the road. There are no other shops or people in sight, just the picturesque mountains and long winding roads. He is much older than his wife . He’s disappointed that after ten years the wife he bought hasn’t produced a son and he tortures her, burning her with his pipe.

The canon shot brings the local police on horseback to investigate. They don’t find the gun, but one of their chief investigators, Zhang (Sun Honglei), notices something amiss. Wang’s wife has an interest in one of the employees, the cowardly Li, and Zhang decides to use this to earn some money on the side by offering to murder these two for Wang.

There’s nothing dark and gloomy about this movie. The police are in a deep blue. The moon is full and bright at night. The characters move around in bright costumes as in Zhang Yimou’s 2002 “Hero.” Is there Peking Opera color symbolism in this noodle shop story as there was in “Hero”?

Zhang, the police officer who turns into a hired assassin, is in blue, typically the color of the bad guy. But in reality, there are no good guys (red being the hero color in Peking Opera) here, the closest is the anxious and cowardly Li.

“A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop” is both homage to the Coen Brothers and a twisted over-the-top parody. It’s not simply a remake; Zhang Yimou makes it his own film. Amusing and fun, but like a lot of Chinese food, this movie is relatively light fare with no moral or message.