The Bodyguard from Beijing is one of the two remakes played by Jet Li in year 1994, the other one being of course Fist of Legend. The contrast between these two movies is fascinating. Fist of Legend is a very well-thought and serious movie which brings up very interesting topics and pays a great homage to the original work -Lo Wei's Fist of Fury- that inspired it, whereas The Bodyguard from Beijing looks like a vacation movie quickly made by friends on the theme of a famous -and fashionable at the time- American movie starring Kevin Costner… However, this amusing aspect that could have spoiled the credibility of the whole movie, is on the contrary the main reason of its irresistible charm.

The Bodyguard from Beijing is of course the Hong Kong version of Mick Jackson's The Bodyguard, a 1992 movie starring Kevin Costner and singer Whitney Houston. The story is quite simple and universal enough to be easily adapted in other countries. Whitney Houston is a famous singer who suddenly begins to receive anonymous death letters and whose manager hires a bodyguard -Kevin Costner- to protect her. As she is a selfish and bad tempered person, she first refuses her bodyguard's help and does whatever she can to disobey him in order to annoy him. But as soon as he saves her life once she falls in love with him and they begin to have an affair, which seems logically incompatible with the bodyguard's duty.
The Bodyguard from Beijing starts with almost the same story, except for the reason why the girl is threatened : she is not famous but the girlfriend of a rich man, and she witnesses a murder by chance one day… as the murderers are later on trial, they want to suppress her. Michelle, played by Christy Chung, is also selfish and bad tempered, and when her boyfriend hires a Chinese bodyguard called Hui Ching Yeung (Jet Li) to protect her, she can't stand this interference in her everyday life and starts to reject the intruder. Of course, Hui saves her life and she falls in love with him…

But since this turning point, the two movies go to opposite directions. And this is when it becomes really funny. The comparison between the two movies is almost inevitable, when we remember The Bodyguard's success in 1992, and how long Whitney Houston's songs were played on our radios stations… We can't help it but laugh when we see how this luxurious Hollywood movie was remade with such cheap means in Hong Kong two years after. But once again, this limitation of means that could have cruelly handicapped The Bodyguard from Beijing remains on the contrary its major strength, since it implied such huge imagination to compensate.

Within the very first minutes of The Bodyguard from Beijing, we know what it is talking about, everything is settled down before we realise it : like in the original movie, it starts with the bodyguard at training, showing how brave and efficient he is. He's the best, no doubt on that. Then, hardly a few minutes later, we are offered a hilarious flash-back summing up the murder and the other witnesses' death in strange circumstances such as a crazy elevator or a bombed phone box, or Michelle's cat electrified in her bath !... not to mention Jet Li's upset look when he discovers how beautiful his client happens to be… This hysteric opening belongs to a Hong Kong movie tradition : there's no time to loose. This is certainly one of the most enjoyable aspects of this kind of movies… and The Bodyguard from Beijing illustrates this quite brilliantly.
The Bodyguard represents on the contrary an excellent example of Hollywood's trend to insist on long and boring introductions which slow down the rhythm of the whole story with useless details. It takes almost 45 minutes before the movie really starts!

It is although funny to notice little differences between the two movies such as the fact that in the original one, Kevin Costner hires a whole team to install the surveillance equipment - alarms, cameras… - all-around the house, whereas Jet Li does all the instalment by himself ! The gap of budgets is also obvious when we take a look at the two houses. The Bodyguard's settings are luxurious and money fulfils every part of the screen, while in The Bodyguard from Beijing the director tries to convince us that Michelle lives in a palace when it's only a common big house shot in distorted angles to cheat the audience !
The whole movie exudes a lack of money and time : it was actually completed in seven weeks and this can explain the strange cut and poor settings as well as the holes of the script. There are things in The Bodyguard from Beijing that we still can't understand clearly after several watchings… for example : is Keung an accomplice of the villain in the beginning or just an admirer of Michelle who simply dreams of an autograph ?… which brings us to the question : why an autograph ? is she a star ? Another mystery of the movie is the surprising appearance of Ngai Sing in the middle of the movie. The first villain is simply forgotten and replaced by this dangerous guy who seeks for revenge after Hui Ching-Yeung executed his brother.
However all these shady enigmas add fun to the movie. Actually we laugh a lot. The action scenes by themselves are full of humor : the sequence in the shopping center is at the same time hilarious and simply amazing. Michelle cannot stand anymore the way she's imprisoned at home by her straight bodyguard. Exasperated by the young woman's aggressive attitude, he lets her do whatever she wants, that is to say go shopping. But the villains are hiding everywhere… fortunately, Hui had guessed it and shows his professionalism by protecting his client against the killers in the middle of the crowd, and exterminating them without mercy but amazing precision and skills… Through this terrific scene, we can still notice that some of the bad guys seem to be the same stunts used several times!

But the most remarkable action scene is certainly the fight between Jet Li and Ngai Sing by the end of the movie. Imagination and delirium reach here unknown heights for our most delightful pleasure. Hui has the original idea to fill the house with gas so that the bad guys who invaded it a few minutes sooner can't use their guns. This is when the duel starts between the "best bodyguard" and the "best soldier". Ngai Sing shows his outstanding skills to attack our hero in a stylish and flying choreography in which we can recognise Yuen Kwai and Yuen Tak's inevitable touch. The way he is using his legs and plays with his long dark coat, the way Jet replies and then attacks by using different techniques including tai chi… this fight is one of the most inventive and one of the funniest of all Jet's movies. The climax remains in this surreal moment when the two guys are struggling for water around a tap ! the most unbelievable thing is that we find just normal that drama shows again 5 minutes later…