Director: Corey Yuen
Year: 1994
Rating: 6.5
In this film there are a few oases of excellent action pieces set in a desert of general blandness propped up by Christy Chung's loveliness and the myriad of close-ups of her face. Jet Li plays a Peoples Republic Army bodyguard with as stern a demeanor as a hospital floor nurse; he never cracks a smile in the entire film. Ok – once fleetingly. He is assigned to protect Christy - the girlfriend of a rich Honkie and having a very nice lifestyle. She witnessed a murder by Wong Kam-kong, a big triad boss and he wants her dead. Three other witnesses were easily disposed of. Jet has to work with a Hong Kong cop played by Kent Cheng. Kent has a very different attitude towards his job as he spends his time placing bets and barbecuing in the backyard of her home. This brings into play a common theme in Hong Kong films as 1997 approached. "Capitalists and Communists. Hand in Hand" as Cheng mockingly says - he in a sweaty undershirt and Jet in a crisp green uniform. Clearly, the producers - Golden Harvest – are out to please the Mainland in this one with an ending showing Jet with the Mainland flag waving behind him and with both him and the Mainland killer way more competent than anyone in Hong Kong.
Neither Jet nor Christy are too thrilled with the setup and his restricting
her movements - until Jet saves her in a well-staged shoot up in a shopping
mall (HK films seem to love to break up malls!) in which it seems nearly
everyone is a hired killer. She has a younger brother that they take with
them and he is so annoying and stupid that I was hoping he would be caught
in the cross-fire. Not killed mind you. Just wounded enough so that he would
have to leave the movie (he is later but too late for me). Kent and his partner
Keung are useless of course but who needs them with Jet around. Christy
just had to get some shopping in. She does say sorry though. Not for all
the innocents killed because of being a spoiled brat but just sorry for
causing you trouble. In these types of films the innocents don't count.
Just extras.
I lost count of the number of guys Jet took out. Pregnant women, security
guards, lunch customers and more - all killers. All dead. How did they all
get in place so quickly? Great public transportation. Including Ngai Sing's
brother. Both ex Red soldiers and trained assassins. Now he of course has
to seek revenge because he promised his brother to always protect him. It
seems to me that a promise like that should include a clause - unless you
get killed in the process of killing someone else. Just to take his brother's
body out of the morgue, he kills five guys. Isn't there any easier way to
claim a dead body? I bet the dead men thought being security for a morgue
was a safe job. It is up to Ngai to finish the job and add Jet to it.
Having your life saved seems to be a turn on as Christy now does practically
everything she can to bed Jet. Next time just strip for the camera in your
bedroom. He will be watching. All to no avail though as this might distract
him for just a second from his duty. Come on Jet, live a little - you don't
have a sweetie like Christy throwing herself at you every day! Instead he
takes a lot of cold showers. Christy has never looked better than she does
here. When she openly tries to seduce Jet in a nightgown even my TV started
sweating. I just took a cold shower too. The final fight is a very good
one. Amazingly fast, clever and brutal. It is against Ngai Sing and about
a hundred minions or target practice as we call them in the trade.
It is a soft action film. Corey Yuen both
directs and choreographs so the action scenes are in safe hands but there
is a lot of down time in the film – Jet and Kent bonding, Jet and Christy
bonding, Christy just flouncing around looking great and the irritating
child. You keep waiting for something to happen and it does eventually but
maybe another fight in there somewhere would have helped. There isn’t a
lot of chemistry between Jet and Christy, but she is basically a chemistry
lab on her own. Not considered by most as one of Jet’s better films but
part of that may be because the other films he was in were so good around
the same time – Kung Fu Cult Master, New Legend of Shaolin, Fist of Legend
and My Father is a Hero – all within a couple years. The Bodyguard from Beijing
doesn’t match up against those and feels less ambitious but it still well-worth
a visit.
