Boring, long, and too preachy.

Best movie of this year hands down!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

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.

For what it is,this is a thoroughly enjoyable 40's detective flick.Mike Carter (Tierney),gets sacked for punching his superior in an office fracas and becomes tempted into protecting a rich,meat packing business woman from some unscrupulous characters.......oh and gets framed for the murder of his previous superior in the process.Assisting him is Doris Brewster (Lane),his girlfriend who still works in the police station he once frequented,and is able to provide Carter with valuable info from police files now out of his reach.At a runtime of just over an hour,a movie like this needs to have a cracking pace,and this movie doesn't disappoint. It has all the action,intrigue,humour and suspense you could need,including some great one liners delivered by Tierney,all thanks to Richard Fleischer's direction.You really cannot go wrong with this one.

a naive story. classic thriller. not bad actors. and Robert Altman first steps. the pieces - a good guy in troubles, his girl friend, a wise old lady, the murderer. a childish plot but, in same measure, seductive script and interesting performance. Lawrence Tierney does a credible detective with usual ingredients of innocent in a dark world and virtues of perfect hero. Priscilla Lane is best choice as young courageous woman who gives help to her boy-friend and serves with strong energy the justice. at first sigh, nothing original. but a nice film has not need by originality. flavor of old rules, vulnerable old lady and honest detective are enough for few sparkles of memories.

Because the formula of the movie required (and restricted) what the film would/could have in it. This is a well made fast paced movie with flashes of effective style and some novel touches. Like the following: The "boss" of the meat packing business, the character that requires a bodyguard, is an older woman for instance. And the setting of a conspiracy at a meat packing plant is also kind of novel. The set up with the angry cop getting tossed off the force has a nice pay off in the plot. There are some effective shock moments in the film too though most of these are in the first half.But what's missing, and not "required" from a B picture in much real drama. It's by the numbers without anything other than those numbers being hit. There seems to be no real emotions at stake for the characters. Good guys, Good gals, bad guys fill in their zone of the script without becoming, or allowed to become, real people who have real lives at stake. This doesn't become the existential nightmare for the lead bodyguard or the Kafkaesque descent of the outsider tosses into darkness that the great noirs sometimes achieve. The actors could be partially faulted for this, Tierney is so tough that he never stops to be really concerned about his own fate or anyone Else's. There is a good element of mystery as to who the real villain is. But what that this does is keep the film from having any real menace. And what the villain or villains do isn't gripping enough, frequently enough, to keep any sense of suspense of danger to the proceedings. It's a puzzle the main character must solve--not much more. Rumors of a longer cut? Never heard those rumors before the IMDb. Though the "remaining" movie doesn't feel like it's missing anything--other than a deeper script. The style of the direction hints at deeper darker things but that's not in the program so to speak. It's very good for what it is allowed to be, or "B" if you prefer. Plot, Action, style-no resonance or deeper secrets allowed.

A consensus seems to exist among commentators on Richard Fleischer's Bodyguard, based on a story by the young Robert Altman. The consensus is that, as it stands, it fails to satisfy; the background to this verdict is that somewhere there is – or at least was – a longer cut of the picture that probably would have been, if not a little masterpiece of film noir, a less nettlesome movie.Feral Lawrence Tierney, a detective fired from the force for insubordination, gets offered the job of bodyguard to a old woman whose wealth comes from the meat-packing industry. At first reluctant, he accepts when shots shatter a mirror in the woman's home. Following her on a nocturnal errand, he's coshed on the head and comes to in his car parked on railway tracks; riding shotgun is the police officer who fired him, dead. Now the prime suspect, he lams up.Assisting him in his efforts to clear himself is Priscilla Lane, his mole in police headquarters. (They devise a curious means of communication. She reads the files onto 78s and delivers them to a record store where he listens to them in a booth.) It turns out that his murdered superior investigated the death of a meat inspector at one of the plants owned by his employer....What remains of the movie is directed with pace and even some style by Richard Fleischer (The Narrow Margin, Armored Car Robbery, The Boston Strangler; he showed a lot of sass in his early days, before he ossified into a hack.) But what we lack compromises what we have. The 13 minutes excised from the movie somewhere along the line no doubt patch up the holes in the leaky plot – like, who knew Tierney was off to the optometrist's office and set up the ambush? A fuller version would probably make, as has been remarked, for a more grisly final confrontation, a la Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, in the meat-processing plant; in the print in common circulation, it abruptly fizzles out. Certainly, that's the lack most keenly felt. What with the meat saws whining and the meat grinders rumbling, surely Fleischer did not conclude the story with the malefactor hurling an empty pistol, bootlessly, at Tierney – to be followed, almost instantly, with Tierney and Lane leaving on their honeymoon. Somewhere out there, a few links of blood sausage are missing.