With a running time over 2 hours, I found this movie a bit slow and extremely over-dramatized. I mean no disrespect for the events that led to the China Revolution of the beginning of the 20th century, although trying to put too much drama into this by ways of overacting and continuously falling in a pit of drama is not helping much.There are a couple of moments that shine, like the fight of the policeman with one of the assassins or, particularly, the apparition of the cleaned up beggar. Well, in fact, these are the only 2 real fights in the whole movie.This movie could have done much better without so much drama and little less running time. In order to make people know about the Revolution, you don't need to make a mockery out of the real tragedy.

I enjoyed this film, as I do anything with Donnie Yen. Being a Westerner I have to say this movie is hard to follow. I don't know the history, and the subtitles leave a lot to be desired, but I feel it was a worthy purchase. Beautifully filmed, a little drawn out, well acted. No real fighting until the end, and an epic ending it is. Several scenes I had to back up and watch a few times to figure out exactly what happened in the fights because it all goes by fast. Lots of interesting side stories, convoluted plot, but a deeply touching and human tale of that period of Chinese history I guess. I'd give it two big thumbs up. I'll watch it again after a few months, sometimes it pays to put some time between the first viewing and subsequent watchings on stuff like this.I am a huge fan of Eastern cinema, I own a bunch of 'em ranging from Shaw Brothers stuff from the 70s to whatever is the latest. I especially love Japanese chambara, but a good Chinese film is hard to beat. Yeah, there is some wire fu, but the story is worth dealing with flying kung fu guys.That Donnie Yen is a badass, never disappoints. If you haven't seen his Ip Man stuff yet, do that. You won't be sorry.

This is NOT Hollywood type Kick-Ass. This is NOT an Arty House of Daggeers.This is a historical drama with some neat kung-fu thrown in. Beautiful to look at. From the elegance of the costumes to the dirty streets in the ghetto. Bodyguards and Assassins has charm, tragedy, drama, loyalty, respect, ignorance and more going for it. Slightly long but thoroughly enjoyable.I was unaware of this part of Chinas history (boy do the English come off bad yet again) and I'm glad I watched it.

I had the pleasure (but discomfort) of watching this on the plane from Taipei to Bangkok and have never been so engrossed in an in-flight movie. It was heartbreaking and exciting and, although perhaps slightly out of place, the action sequences were excellent. The acting was great and this may well be my favorite film so far this year. I am unaware as to how accurate the story is but I would bet it is much closer to reality than most "Based on a True Story"-type films. Another reviewer said they were expecting a Hong Kong "Gangs of New York" and I think it does fall somewhere near this but I would rewatch this film 100 times before watching "Gangs" again... this is mostly due to Cameron Diaz's atrocious performance. I hope this film receives a subtitled release on DVD as I will definitely want to add it to my collection.