Disappointing, considering with all the people involved

i felt it was way way to long, and you good smell the manipulation in the air. Far to many overly dramatic scenes. Now i like my action movies but some of the action in this movie was just stupid and over the top for no reason. people getting killed sometimes 3 times before they finally died to try and manipulate the audience even further. I thought it was trying to be american, and it even failed at that. it had potential to be brilliant but instead was mediocre

"But on the positive side Nicholas Tse was great!!! He played the simpleton Rickshaw Man with so much charme and little boy innocence it was impossible not to adore him! Quite a departure from his usual moody action type. I loved him in this!!"

I don't think he is a good actor normally but i agree he was superb in this.

I loved Chinese and Hong Kong films when they first became widely known in the international market. But in recent years they have gone slowly but steadily downhill. Once the directors and actors became internationally known, they have tried to adapt their work to satisfy American (or “Western”) audiences and in doing so their films have largely lost their original character and charm that earned them fame in the first place.

I don’t know what kind of film Bodyguards and Assassins was supposed to be. It appeared to be a cross between a “patriotic film” with a political agenda and a normal kung fu (or more accurately, wire fu) film. The film appeared to give the impression that the film was truthful to history: that all the characters were real and all the events had actually happened. For example, after the death of each of the heroes, there was text on the screen describing the name of the person, where he came from and even the dates of birth and death! However, all credulity is lost when one sees the ridiculous kung fu displayed in the film. Also, I believe back in those days, trained fighters were able to throw objects of various shapes and sizes to take out hidden opponents with greater accuracy than modern firearms.

The ways that the film attempted to manipulate the viewer’s emotions were embarrassing and in some cases just laughable. It appeared that to the scriptwriter, the longer a character grabbed a dead body and the louder he cried, then the greater was his grief. It also appeared that every “hero” in the film had to “die” not just once but three or four times. One oversized Yao Ming lookalike was stabbed no less than a hundred times by some twenty assassins, but later rose again to dispose of several more of his opponents before he “died” again! The gambler played by Donnie Yen and the long-haired martial arts guy proved even more difficult to kill. I am not sure if they had been inspired by real historical characters or by Wile E. Coyote.

As a “patriotic” movie, the message was largely lost since most of the characters knew nothing about the revolution and probably would not have cared. For example, the rickshaw driver was illiterate and was just blindly loyal to the employer and his son. Similarly, the beggar and the oversized Shaolin guy joined simply because the said employer treated them well and gave them food and/or money.

After watching the film, the viewer might be left wondering why the Qing Dynasty that the revolutionaries attempted to (and later did) overthrow was so bad after all. According to Dr. Sun in the film, their aim was to set up a democratic regime that would guarantee individual rights and freedom and end corruption. In other words, all would be fine after that. Today, exactly a century after the Revolution in 1911, it is perhaps time to take stock of the situation and consider how much has or hasn’t really been achieved. To the extent that the film helps to provoke such thoughts, then it may be of some value after all.