Bodyguards and Assassins

The other night, as promised, I went to see “Bodyguards and Assassins” (not “Monks and Assassins”, as I said previously, my mistake). I was also wrong to think that it would be a terrible movie – I have rarely had such a good time at the cinema. I’m not sure how much that depended on the whole experience, so I’m hesitant to recommend it as much as I’d like to. I guess it’s one of those films that you either allow yourself to get into or you don’t and that makes all the difference.

The film has some of the best heroes I’ve ever seen. China has a distinct tradition of valorising self-sacrifice for the sake of society. Whatever you think of this as a political philosophy, it definitely makes for amazing movies. I think the closest analogue I’ve seen from Hollywood is The Untouchables, a film about the down-to-earth Chicago cops who brought down Al Capone. Interestingly (starting a sentence with “interestingly” never bodes well, but) Bodyguards and Assassins, like The Untouchables, features a scene riffing off the classic Soviet blockbuster Battleship Potemkin. The scene’s been reproduced about 1 billion times since but I think the one in Bodyguards is my favourite by far. So it’s definitely a film with a little bit of depth – presumably there’s a glut of other movie references in it that went way over my head.

I won’t ruin the film by telling you what it’s about, mainly because I don’t actually know. Literally, I have no idea what the subject of the movie was. I have the classic language-learner’s problem that I understand the majority of the words spoken but almost none of the sentences. I always find this difficult when someone asks me “how much did you understand?” because the answer is often “most of it, and yet none of it.” It’s also why the people who tell you that foreign languages are easy because “50 basic words make up 80% of conversation” (or something) are idiots. Yes it’s true that the basic words make up the whole skeleton of speech, but the actual meaning is dependent on the, oh, ten thousand other words that people tend to use.

Anyway, I digress. Despite not knowing the actual topic of the movie I can confidently say that the themes of love, family, courage and audacity overcome cultural barriers. And even the ability to understand the dialogue.