Alicia I love this movie so much

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

dworldeater The Bodyguard From Beijing aka The Defender is a solid action classic starring Jet Li and directed by Corey Yuen. Prior to this project, Jet Li had only done period kung fu movies. This is his 1st modern action movie that combines martial arts with gunplay. Jet Li is a bodyguard from mainland China imported to protect a prosecution witness ( the gorgeous Christy Cheung) from harm. Christy Cheung's character initially does not like the elite bodyguard hired to protect her. As she falls into danger, Jet Li keeps her out of harms way, she then finds appreciation for Jet Li and his dedication to his job. A bond and mutual attraction grows between them. Kent Cheng appears in this as well as a cop assigned to work with the bodyguard. Kent, equally adept at drama and comedy is mostly the comic relief for the film. Corey Yuen did a fine job directing here with keeping the right tone, telling the story fluently with the right amount of action and getting good performances from the cast. Corey also is the action choreographer so he is responsible for the quality of the action also, which was done well with a healthy dose of guns, explosion and kung fu. He also works with Jet Li as action choreographer on all of Jet's US films. Overall, TBFB is a solid action flick and when I want to watch a Jet Li movie with guns this is my 2nd choice only to the awesome, incredible action classic Black Mask.

david-sarkies This is the Hong Kong version of The Bodyguard. Hong Kong cinema seems to take existing American movies and rewrite them in a way that they should have been. This has been done with Witches of Eastwick, coming out as Erotic Ghost Story; Fast Times at Ridgemont High, coming out as Yesteryou, Yesterme, and Yesterday; and Die Hard, coming out as High Risk. In some cases they come out much better, as with High Risk, other times they are just ordinary, as with Bodyguard from Beijing.A school teacher, along with two others, witnesses the murder of an accountant. The other two are killed but the police manage to get to the teacher in time and protect her. The teacher's boyfriend is very rich and hires a professional bodyguard from China to protect her. It begins with the woman hating the bodyguard because he is invading her privacy and treating her like a prisoner, but this changes after he saves her life she falls in love with him.The interesting thing about this movie is that the bodyguard (Jet Lee) is not interested in a romance, and what makes this movie much better than the American counterpart, is that he does not change at the last minute and come an professes his love to her. This is one thing that makes a superb movie, and that is consistency of characters. Her character changes, namely because he has saved her life in a very obvious way.The Hong Kong tendency to go overboard is not that prevalent in this movie. This is somewhat more American as it tries to have a realistic plot. It is true that the plot is somewhat more realistic than an American movie, but it does fall down in scenes such as the shopping mall. There are a couple of characters which make the film interesting, and that is Fat Po and Billy. Fat Po is a police officer that is fat and addicted to gambling. Billy is the nephew of the school teacher and these two characters bounce off of each other quite effectively. Fat Po is an incompetent police officer that bumbles through life while Billy is an eager child who wants to look good in front of his peers.This movie is more suspenseful than High Risk. It is not really an action movie, though it has some reasonable scenes. Most of this time it is waiting for the enemy to attempt to kill the teacher because she is the witness. There and are some other suspenseful moments and the movie delivers it quite well.Bodyguard from Beijing is a rather average movie, but enjoyable if you like the Hong Kong cinema.

rory_penland If you liked "Black Mask" for it's kung-fu (pronounced gung-fu in Asia) action, you will love the final gung-fu battle of this movie. Trying to fight a battle with a more than worthy opponent AND the house is filling up with gas fumes. Very clever.The girl is annoying in the first half of the film, but that is usually the case in Hong Kong films of this nature. The ladies are written to be comic relief.I can not comment on the dubbing as I have seen the original Chinese version on TV here in China, but usually the dubbing in these older Chinese action films is hilariously bad. You may have fun with that as well. This is not the type of film you want to take seriously. It is a escapist gung-fu police thriller.My only beef is that I would have liked to have seen more gung-fu action and a little less gun play. It is a nice action rental to kick back and watch with friends.

Diana A pretty good movie all together, with only two real problems-1) The annoying, whiny girl. This seems to be a problem with a great many of the Hong Kong movies that I've seen. Jackie Chan had a series of brainless, whining, silly girlfriends, women who made you wish for an overpass to shove them off of. And several chow yun fat movies that i've seen also contained truly lame girlfriends who just made you grind your teeth. Why is this? Is that what's considered attractive over in China? The girl in the Bodyguard goes from whining constantly about Li's attempts to save her life to turning horribly kittenish(and still useless) after he shoots up a mall killing over a dozen assassins, making her see his value. The same could not be said of her, as she has no value. The second problem was the ending. Not that I wanted Li's character to end up with bubblehead-far from it. It made me particularly happy to see that he didn't. What i don't understand is the long shot of him standing in his uniform in front of the Chinese flag while music plays soulfully. What kind of ending is that? Was this movie bankrolled by the Chinese government as a propaganda film? I kept expecting Li to thrust out a forefinger at the audience and say "Uncle Mao wants you!" Otherwise, this was a fairly good film, with some excellent fight scenes and a truly interesting bad guy. Worth a watch or two.