Bodyguard: A New Beginning – DVD Review

The Film:

This is the story of Leung (Vincent Sze), a bodyguard for Triad boss Wong (Richard Ng), who is given one last assignment by his boss. Leung wants to get out of the Triad business upon hearing the news that his boss is getting very old in age and thinking of retiring from the world of drugs, guns, violence and murder. Wong’s son, Yuen (Carl Ng) is not mature nor capable of taking over the family business, as he is too busy drinking heavily and mistreating women on a daily basis, learns that his father has a competing criminal organization, led by Kai (Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa) that wants to join forces, but his father refuses. Wong’s son decides to try to make a name for himself by screwing over his father and the triad by giving Kai a photo of a woman, Chloe (Stephanie Langton), who is very important to Wong for reasons we are not initially told.

Starring some well-known actors and actresses in a Hong Kong/U.K. production, filming in both locations for shots and decides to build upon its characters with nothing. Its not action-packed enough to truly be considered a kung-fu flick, as there are fight scenes sporadically occurring throughout the whole film, and the plot tries to be more than it is. The film seems like it is low-budget, even though the quality of the picture looks like the production had some coin to throw around. I just didn’t really believe any of the “bad-asses” to truly be bad-ass.

I have seen quite a few epic kung-fu/action flicks in my days, some with the always legendary Bruce Lee, the more modern-age wu-shu destroyer Jet Li, and all the fighting action actors before and after them. The kung-fu film, for it to be a good one, must choose whether it is going to be a kung-fu action flick or a serious drama with a convincing plot and deep character development intertwined with intense scenes of dramatic interactions between the characters. In Bodyguard: A New Beginning, neither is present. The film flops as a decent kung-fu action flick, and it falls on its ass if it wants to be looked at as a respected piece of dramatic film making.

The film, directed by Chee Keong Chung (Underground), who also was responsible for writing it with Oliver Moran, just did not do it for me. The storyline moved along at a painstakingly slow pace, tempting me so many times to just throw in the towel, and terminate my tedious boredom for this wanna-be action or drama, depending on which you felt there was more of in it, and neither of which was any good, anyways. There were a few scenes that had some decent martial arts present in them, but they were simple, boring, and not flashy enough for a movie showcasing two British martial arts stars, Mark Strange (Batman Begins, Underground) and 3-time World Kickboxing Champion Nathan Lewis (Batman Begins). I think some of the scenes almost were comedic in their approach and the way they were introduced to the viewer, arriving in a monster truck and doing flips exiting their seats had me cracking up, to say the least. They are only in a few scenes anyways and had no scenes of dialogue. Not much of actors and didn’t have many scenes of action and martial arts in the film, something that would have made Bodyguard: A New Beginning more enjoyable to watch, in my opinion.

Oh, and to top it off, they break a little girl’s neck at some point in the film. Unless you are going for total shock value, primarily in a very extreme and violent horror film, its never a great plot scenario to kill a little girl, especially when the film may have a chance at being a made-for-TV movie of the week, and we know those are always selections made because there is nothing else decent to show on that day of the week. Not one scene in this film could be considered epic, even though under the right direction many had the potential to be.

The DVD:

Audio/Video: The film was a studio screener and the sound was pretty low and not very consistent in audio levels. I had the volume three times louder than I normally would have it just so I could hear half of the dialogue. The quality of the video was really good and was nicely letter-boxed. I felt many of the scenes had a sort of bluish hue to them, but this may have been an artistic choice by the director and cameraman, but who knows.

Extras: N/A

Conclusion: I have warned you in advance that this movie is not worth one’s time watching, for it does not have enough martial arts or action in it to satisfy the kung-fu/action fan and the story does not go anywhere exciting and does so at an excruciatingly slow and dull pace. The characters are as deep as my bank account (which is nil!) and you end up not caring whether they live or die. Avoid this film if you can.

The Film: Rating:

The DVD: Rating:

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