[MOVIE] The Bodyguard 特工爺爺

Tuesday, April 05, 2016

[MOVIE] The Bodyguard 特工爺爺

After 17 years of hiatus, Sammo Hung (洪金宝) returned as director and lead actor for this blockbuster action movie - The Bodyguard.

SYNOPSIS

The Bodyguard tells the story of Lao Ding 老丁 (Sammo Hung), a retired and highly skilled soldier. Upon his retirement, he led a very peaceful life, spending time with his family until one fine day he lost his granddaughter while she was under his care in a garden. His daughter blames him and he was deeply remorseful, putting all the blames on himself on why he can protect others but have failed to protect even his closest family member. As such, he moved and settled in the dark and unknown corner of the world where China, Russia and North Korea meet. This is when he found out that he was suffering from the beginning of dementia.

Lee 李政久 (Andy Lau) and his daughter Cherry 小春花 (Jacqueline Chan) is one the neighbours of Lao Ding. Cherry would often seek shelter at Lao Ding's house and this brought back memories of his own lost granddaughter. The two of them often hang out together until her dad got into an issue with the local mafia gang and Cherry got abducted. This is when Lao Ding decided to call upon his long forgotten fighting skills to save the life of this little girl.

REVIEW

As much as this movie would like to bring out more of the emotional side of Sammo Hung with many scenes of him and Cherry to interpret this, such as fishing and eating ice-cream together. However, I felt that this part can be more intense. In the movie, Sammo plays his character so aloof that when watching, I can't feel that grief and guilt he had in his heart after losing his granddaughter. Similarly, I can't feel the deep connection between him and Cherry too. So he goes all out to save the life of Cherry, is it to make up of his guilt or he has already treat her as his granddaughter?

Andy Lau has quite a lot of screen time that I wondered why he was introduced as a special guest appearance for this movie. Nevertheless, he is still as charming as ever and I guess there's some of his fans who would just go to watch this movie because of him.

The Landlord 朴仙女 (Li Qin Qin) is a very interesting character in the movie. She's not afraid to show her affection towards Lao Ding and everytime she's on screen, it will brings laughter to the audiences. Movie will be too dull without this character.

There were lots of close up fighting scenes and most of them were deadly and bones cracking which lead to the video below on some skills for self-defense. I personally enjoyed Sammo Hung's fighting scenes more compared to his acting scenes.