[KFCC] Bodyguard from Beijing Review

Story: Michelle is the witness of a gruesome murder, all the witnesses to this murder are found dead one after the other. Michelle's boyfriend is a rich businessman and uses his money and power to acquire the best bodyguard possible, he hires Hui (Jet Li) an elite bodyguard from Beijing. Upon his arrival in Hong Kong, Hui takes charge of the situation much to the displeasure of Michelle's current protectors. The two HK police officers that were protecting Michelle convince Hui to stay on the case. It does not take long before Michelle wants to get rid of Hui as he is controlling her every movement as if her life was in terrible danger.

Review: Bodyguard from Beijing reminds us a lot of the American movie The Bodyguard, a story of danger and forbidden romance. The story is very predictable and lacks any real kick. During the entire movie you have a sense of what is going to happen. The story is easy to follow and lacks quality and originality.

There are very few characters in this movie, most of the story is focused on the bodyguard, the girl and the two cops. The characters are simple and like the story predictable. There is very little depth to the characters and they are generally uninteresting. Even Jet Li is pretty unexciting in this movie but that is the characters he is playing, a cold and rigid bodyguard.

Actionwise this movie is alright, Jet Li always bring up the action level of a movie. Considering the type of story of this movie you had quite a bit of drama involved thus less action. During the entire movie you have a couple of nice long action scenes followed by a lot of drama in between. The action scenes, realistic kung fu and gun fights, are pretty good with the exception of a couple cheesy things. Unfortunately the action in this movie is not enough to bring up the entertainment value.

The subtitles on the VCD version made us very sad because we could not see them some of the time. Remember that old problem of white on white, you have a lot of that in this movie. Actually this might be the movie with the most white on white ever. Because of that we missed quite a bit of the dialog but the dialog were boring anyway. Bodyguard from Beijing is not such a cool movie after all, it was pretty low quality and cheesy. Kind of like a B movie, we don't know if this movie could have been made as a rip off of The Bodyguard but it could have been an influence. We were not impressed by this movie and found it pretty ordinary, perhaps some of you out there liked this one better than us. I guess Jet Li fans would want to see this one but we suggest rent before you buy.