Bodyguards & Assassins with Donnie Yen, Cung Le & Xing Yu

Bodyguards and Assassins is a Chinese film that stars Donnie Yen, Cung Le, Xing Yu and large line up of China’s most talented.

The movie revolves around the event of Sun Wen (based on Dr Sun – a revolutionary leader who played a part in the toppling of the Qing Dynasty in 1911).

We’re introduced to a a series of different characters but first and foremost we meet Li Yutang and Chen Shaobai. Chen arrives in Hong Kong a few days before the planned visit of Sun Wen, and talks to his friend and businessman Li Yutang, who helps to fund the movements of the group revolutionaries.

With the inevitable assassination attempt of Sun Wen, Chen and the group of revolutionaries do their best to come up with a plan to protect him. So we see a group of ordinary men turned body guards to protect Sun Wen against the Assassins (hence the name – Bodyguards and Assassins!).

To further trick their would be assassins, Li Yutang, against the wishes of his father, decides to impersonate Sun Wen to distract the assassins away from their real target.

This ends in a long and dangerous struggle as the revolutionaries and their Sun Wen impersonator run across town trying to avoid being killed by the deadly assassins being sent their way.

The Bodyguards and Assassins

There are a lot of characters in this film, each of them relatively memorable but used thinly.

When I got my copy of this film, I first took notice to Donnie Yen being the main actor displayed in the poster art – despite the fact is role is ultimately minor. He plays a gambler who does a lot of spy work to gain more cash to simply gamble away. When he discovers he has a daughter he does his best to pull his head in and become someone he can be proud of. So he plays his part as one of the bodyguards by doing the whole ‘Donnie Yen kicking ass‘ thing.

Nicholas Tse plays the Rickshaw man, he is the bodyguard who pulls the cart with Sun Wen’s impersonator in it. A seemingly harmless but tough kid who grew up fighting on the streets. Nicholas Tse’s role is one of the more showcased in the film as it shows his character a little bit more than most of the others.

You’ve got the daughter of a man killed off early in the film, kicking ass; a beggar named Liu Yubai who uses fans to fight off his enemies but most noticeably -all of the Bodyguards are backed up the gigantic Shaolin Monk Wang, played by NBA Basketball player Mengke Bateer.

Wang is absolutely huge and powerful, but despite being stabbed several hundred times, keeps coming back to life to fight just that little bit more – it’s a bit crazy.

The Assassins are lead by General Yan Xiaguo – an unstoppable and incredibly skilled fighter who is backed up by his Assassins – a large group of men who include characters played by Cung Le and Xing Yu.

While each Bodyguard has his own distinct characteristics and personality, the Assassins are all pretty ruthless and display little persona in comparison. I think this was done on purpose so that the audience could relate to the ‘good guys’ and not give a damn about the ‘bad guys’.

But ultimately it’s like a mixed bag of action all sorts with a reasonable story. The pieces are all strung together with the aim of giving a feeling of depth (I think), but to me seems a little mixed.

The Action and Martial Arts

The action is not half bad.

The scenes with Donnie Yen have his mark of quality, but being that he plays a minor role, he consumes only a minor fraction of the action but demonstrates some cool Parkour / Free Running. Every character gets their own slice of action and battle – each a little different than the other, but all being very standard in their own way. They didn’t break much new ground.

The way it is all strung together as the whole run takes place was done very well though. Pieced together, all of the individual fights are mixed into a long and pretty decent action sequence. This is the main chunk of action in the movie, as the rest is more story telling and revealing the characters behind the bodyguards.

Honestly, its a long movie with a lot of big names that looks like it’s supposed to be and epic film, but it falls short. It does pass for decent though and is worth a watch for a bit of entertainment.