Bodyguards and Assassins

Rating: 7.5/10

Genre: Action

Overall value for money and time: 8.7 /10

Who is Sun Yat-Sen? He is the pivotal character in this movie - the one person all the bodyguards and assassins are trying to protect or assassinate respectively. He is the chinese revolutionary and political leader who in the history books, took down the Qing Dynasty and "freed" China.

This movie felt a little like one of those classic chinese movies like the one with the 10 brothers (can't rem the name of the movie) and "Street Fighter" where it featured a star-studded cast. This time, it's like a modern tribute to the biggest stars in chinese cinema (the majority of them). There were lots of cameos of the great names in chinese films, such as ...

I shall hold my horses back as I would greatly recommend this movie to those who have no idea what it's really all about, and hasn't the slightest clue of what to expect. If like I was, all you know about the movie is that its an action film which starred the present martial arts master Donnie Yuen, go catch this movie for a pleasant surprise before everyone else tells you about it.

Well, that was the major reason of the large discrepancy between both of my ratings for this movie. Because at the end of it all, it didn't quite make it for me. The storyline was slow and brought the mood down at times (could also be because I caught a 1215am midnight movie after a long and tiring day), and what I really didn't like about it is how all the great stars, heroes particularly, were portrayed as "Wo Nang" in this movie.

They weren't the cool characters or even your mediocre citizens trying to protect the "future" Father of the nation, instead, they were either outcasted, dim-witted, or detestable. Well, I understand it's the director's intention to make it that way so that it would seem very sacrificial and "Wei Da" at the end but portraying all of them that way whilst making the assassins formidable-like was just too "convenient" for me.

*spoilers ahead* It felt like the character's were too easily and conveniently killed off one at a time at the end due to the lopsided battle and there's basically no seat-gripping intensity or suspense about who was going to survive at the end - it felt more "ok, this character did all he could and sacrificed himself for a greater cause, highly commendable and saddening" instead of "no... no... is he going to... fight them back!! go go!! you can't die."

Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that due to the star-studded cast and the lowly portrayal of the heroes, there's not really a character to feel for since they die off so easily, and the way Donnie Yuen dealt his "finishing blow" was the "epitome" of anti-climaxal.

It's a movie you probably won't want to catch a second time but will probably regret not catching the first.