I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Sammo Hung's first film as a director in twenty years is THE BODYGUARD, aka MY BELOVED BODYGUARD, a Hong Kong/Chinese co-production that also features Hung in the leading role. It's definitely a mixed bag of a movie, a mixture of only semi-successful character and human drama with some crime genre tropes, cliches, and martial arts scenes. As with many films these days, the trailer is an example of false advertising, making this look like an action-packed movie wheras in reality it's quite slow and sedate, only kicking into gear in the last thirty minutes.I love Hung as an actor but he gives a thoroughly subdued turn here; I found him more sympathetic (and his acting finer) in HEART OF THE DRAGON. Andy Lau gives an energetic performance in support and I was delighted to see various cameos from old Hung buddies like Yuens Wah and Biao as well as Tsui Hark and Karl Maka; it's just a pity they're all so brief. The film's story is quite predictable and has some slow spots, although the action scenes are fun and seem in part to have been inspired by the likes of WARRIOR KING and THE RAID 2. I could have done without the animated bone-breaking all the time, but generally the choreography works so there's little to complain about. A lot of us were hoping that THE BODYGUARD would be a new classic to rank alongside Hung's old hits, and it's disappointing that it's not. But you could do worse, and superficially it's not too bad.

I watched this movie expecting a rather fun martial art movie. I saw Sammo Hung in many Chinese kung fu movies and although he was always somewhat fat he always delivered decent stuff. Was it always believable? You decide. But this movie ... Well OK let me start by the beginning.I understand a movie has to set up characters and development. But nothing happen for over 30 minutes. Then we have a very short action scene and nothing happen again for another 30 minutes. There is only one big action piece in the movie and although its better filmed than an usual Steven Seagal action scene, you can clearly see the guy is overweight and can't match with these peoples. Some decent camera work and wire stuff hide the obvious, but the action is plague by a weird looking slowmo effect way too present.Is the story any good? Well not really... The acting is OK from the little girl i supposed but Sammo is wooden as a 2x4. I guess this movie want to be more of a drama than an action movie but even there i had trouble getting into it. Maybe its cause I'm not Chinese...Overall i was very disappointed by this. To me it compare to the bad Steven Seagal movies when nothing happen but even worst. Usually with Seagal you have half decent gun fights and Seagal being the smart ass and pulling a few good lines, but here nothing.I am giving a 4 by compassion for the attempt at a touching story and i am being very generous.

This film has shameless copied, borrowed, stole many other foreign films from Korea, The Man from Nowhere (2010), from Belgium, The Memory of A Killer (2003), and Nicholas Cage's 2014 film, Dying of The Light, as well as a rumor in November, 2014 that Al Pacino and Brian De Palma, director of Scarface (1983) would adapt "The Memory of A Killer" into an American version. This Chinese copycatting film is as close as the Nicholas Cage's role in "Dying of The Light", about a CIA agent with dementia, his body functions were staying mostly fine but his brain got Alzheimer's disease. Then heavily borrowed the story from The Man from Nowhere.Sammo Hung played the guy who was once the palace guard of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, he got such disease and deteriorated rapidly after his retirement. The storyline only added some awkward, unrealistic and highly unlikely romance, and the appendix-like sub-plot of Andy Lau's character, father to a young girl, a hopeless compulsory gambler.The close combat fighting scenes are also heavily borrowed and copied from most of Steven Seagal's action movies, by breaking knuckles, elbows, knees, ankles, neck of all of his opponents, fighting daggers, long or short knives with bare hands and did the most severe body damages to those who unknowingly fighting an unimaginable fighting machine. But the thing is that Sammo Hung is too fat, too old and too bloated to the extreme, making the fighting scenes just looked more like choreographically awkward rehearsals.The story, the scenario and the plot were just too contrived and stereotyped in rigid Chinese way. It's neither like "The Man from Nowhere" that connected us to the young girl and the mysterious killing machine guy, nor gave us any empathy connection of how sad the guy in "The Memory of A Killer", trying to not being useless and helpless. The Bodyguard only gave me some awkward and impatient numb feelings, completely disconnected. The awkward senior romance in this film only made me feel pathetic and nauseating.Hiring those once famous Kung-Fu has-beens as supporting roles were also totally unnecessary, only made the whole film more loose and flat.This is a pathetic patch-up work with a very poor script.

For someone who has dedicated more than half his life reinventing the martial arts genre of modern-day Hong Kong cinema, Sammo Hung certainly has not been resting on his laurels. Not only did he recently direct Aaron Kwok and Gong Li in the many extravagant action set-pieces of 'The Monkey King 2', he has also been busy assuming similar duties on Benny Chan's upcoming period action blockbuster 'The Deadly Reclaim'. Compared to these two elaborate big-budget epics, 'The Bodyguard', which sees Sammo assume multi- hyphenate duties as director, action director and lead actor, feels like a walk in the park for the 64-year-old actor/ martial artist.And it probably is, judging from the friends who have turned up to see Sammo return to the director's chair after a hiatus of close of two decades – including Yuen Wah as the postman of the sleepy town at the border of China and Russia where the movie is set, Yuen Qiu as a social worker, Yuen Biao as the town's police commander and Karl Maka, Tsui Hark and Dean Shek as a bunch of town elders who always have a quick barb to trade with each other. Besides these notable alums from Hong Kong cinema past, contemporaries like Hu Jun, Feng Shaofeng and Eddie Peng have also turned up for the all- stars reunion – though we're leaving out special guest star Andy Lau, since he is after all producer of the movie through his Focus Films company.Though it is unlikely to expect each one of these guest stars to have a meaningful place in the film, those expecting any of them to have anything more than a glorified cameo will be sorely disappointed. Except for Lau, who plays father to the young girl whom Sammo's titular bodyguard befriends and eventually protects, not a single one of the other actors contributes any more than a 'blink-and-miss' appearance, so there's no point wondering if any will spar with Sammo at all. Oh yes, you would do well to know that these 'guest appearances' are completely extraneous to the story, which tells of a retired Central Security Bureau (CSB) officer named Mr Ding who calls upon his very particular set of skills to protect an innocent life.As much as that premise lends itself to a martial arts showcase for Sammo, 'The Bodyguard' is anything but. Indeed, those looking for a straight-out action flick will very likely be disappointed, for Sammo approaches the 'Taken-like' high-concept movie in a conspicuously low-key manner, so much so that it ends up being an hour of set-up, exposition and character build-up for a single extended close- quarter showdown that conveniently pits Sammo against two warring gangster factions at the same time and in the same place. To call it an action thriller would in fact be a misnomer, for it is at best a simple character drama with some bits of action thrown in to lure unsuspecting viewers from Sammo's considerable fan-base.That drama largely consists of Sammo either looking lost due to the early onset of dementia that his character is suffering from or acting shy due to the advances of his landlord Madam Park (Li Qinqin). Crucially, Sammo plays his character so aloof that we cannot quite identify with the grief he has supposedly been carrying in his heart after losing his granddaughter while out with her many years ago, which is also why he is currently estranged from his daughter now in America. In the same way, we can also hardly feel the connection between his character and the young girl he now feels responsible for, or for that matter why he suddenly snaps out of his usual passivity to defend her in the third act.It's no secret that Sammo is a better fighter than an actor, and the fact that he does plenty of the latter and too little of the former in the first two acts makes the movie a drag. Only in the last half hour does Sammo abandon his dementia-induced stupor for a one- against- many showdown against Choi's henchmen and the Russians, which gives him the chance to engage in the sort of lethal bone- breaking we suspect most would be waiting for. Yet it is hardly breathtaking stuff – especially for those well-acquainted with Sammo's previous movies – and too many close-ups as well as a slower-than-ideal frame-rate for Sammo's lightning-quick moves ultimately make this too-little too-late finale slightly underwhelming.That expectations are high for 'The Bodyguard' is inevitable; like we said, this is the first time that Sammo is in the director's chair after helming both 'Mr Nice Guy' and 'Once Upon A Time in China and America' back in 1997. Yet even without the weight of such expectations, this languid drama with just one modest fight sequence at the end is unlikely to satisfy action fans or the rare audience member looking for a serious-minded story on redemption. At this age, there is really little that Sammo need do to cement his legacy as legend, but it should also be said that anyone looking for him to revive his past glories on the big screen will go away empty. We adore Sammo just as much as his most ardent fan, but even that love and respect is not enough for us to find anything redeeming about 'The Bodyguard'. Sorry, 'dai gor'.