AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

gridoon2018 The first few minutes of "The Bodyguard" do have a campy charm: it opens with crawling text from the Bible (the part that Samuel Jackson recites to his soon-to-be victims in "Pulp Fiction"), continues with two karate school teachers in New York arguing about the eternal question of mankind (who is better? Sonny Chiba or Bruce Lee?), and then Chiba appears, playing himself; he immediately stops a plane hijacking and breaks a bottle in two with his bare hand. Unfortunately, any entertainment value, intentional or unintentional, soon gets crushed by the disjointed story, the lack of action for long periods of time, and the poor quality of any present action. To keep it simple, here's why "The Bodyguard" is an unbearable movie to watch:1) You don't know what's going on. 2) There are barely any fights. 3) The fights that are there, are short and terribly filmed.Sonny Chiba is cool. Judy Lee is gorgeous, her face is glorious. It's only for them that I give "The Bodyguard" a 2nd star out of 10. This movie makes 87 minutes feel like 5 hours.

madreinman I watched the American version of this movie from the latest 6-Disc DVD release of a Sonny Chiba collection bought from the US. It was dubbed in English, and without any subtitles.The movie starts out in New York nonetheless, the first scene was typical setting for a hit. The next scene would be totally unrelated to the whole movie, it was a discussion on how would Chiba and Bruce Lee compare as actioned out by two actors trying hard to imitate them.The gritty rough face of Chiba here is I think a trademark from all his films, his dubbed voice however was not as tough as it Chiba would sound like. I think Americans wanted to release the movie with another movie to make it a Grindhouse feature presentation. As like Grindhouse movies, it has violence, nudity and terrible sequence of scenes that sometimes are overlong, or not important at all.The Bodyguard had an interesting plot to work with, however it did not deliver, the scenes were below par, the lines were cheesy, and the action was disappointing for a Chiba film. This would not be the one I would recommend to a person just starting to watch Sonny Chiba's movies. I was good enough to rate with a 5/10 despite the movie's weak showing.

Woodyanders The almighty Sonny Chiba portrays himself as a vehemently anti-drug vigilante who declares open war on dope dealers. Chiba protects the former mistress (fetching Judy Lee) of a murdered New York mob boss from both a rival gang of vicious thugs and the Asian representatives of the Cosa Nostra. Director Simon Nuchtern really pours on the raw, brutal, bone-breaking, blood-spilling violence with ferocious abandon. In addition, Nuchtern provides a generous smattering of tasty gratuitous female nudity and a nasty misogynistic bent to further spice up the sleazy stew. The pace starts out rather slow and dull, but eventually picks up as the film progresses towards its startling downbeat ending. Joel Shapiro's snazzy cinematography makes nifty use of shaky zooms, whiplash pans, prowling tracking shots, wobbly hand-held camera-work and funky freeze frames. Maurice Sarli's groovy, syncopated score likewise does the trick. The bad guys are an extremely mean and scummy bunch of no-count wicked hoodlums. The lovely Etsuko Shihomi briefly pops up as Chiba's feisty younger sister. Martial arts champions Bill Louie and Aaron Banks also make fleeting appearances in a needless, but funny tacked-on prologue. Viva Chiba!

The Bronson Fan This is easily one of the worst martial arts films I've ever seen, and that's saying something. The chant of viva Chiba, viva Chiba is heard at the title, soon you will be chanting to yourself stupid, stupid. The basic story is that the mafia is running drugs into Japan and one man vowels to stop them, of course that's our man Sonny Chiba. The Karate master offers up his service to anyone who can provide information on the drug lords. A woman comes forward and he becomes the bodyguard, but what are her true intentions? Let me say at this point who cares? Soon we are treated to or tortured by a series of poorly choreographed fights and a lame storyline that becomes more and more laughable at every moment. Sonny eventually wipes out the bad guys with his karate skills, end of story. Oh yeah the woman was corrupt too. Congratulations you may have just watched the funniest film ever.As stated already this is one of the worst martial arts films I have ever seen. What makes it semi watchable is to see how badly made a film can be. Some have already mentioned the infamous American intro put into the film. That's probably the most entertaining part of the film and it's beyond funny. I would agree its worth watching just to see how lame the 70's karate scene was at the time. Watch as Aaron Banks leaves a guy hanging by his nuts then flips a fat student (bad editing) punching him in the throat. But everything is badly done in this film. Terrible unbelievable fights, fake I mean fake blood, bad acting, dubbing, wardrobe, and let's not forget the story. One man to take out an entire drug problem in a country? I bet. Fight after fight is laughable. This was the 70's when people still believed karate was effective in a fight, but Chiba brings it to new levels with some of the nonsense put out in this movie. Let's see he kicks a gun in half, kicks a guy so hard what looks like his dentures fall out and of course chopping the bottle scene, give me a break. Not to mention the fact that it's very hard to tell what happens in the fights because it's filmed so poorly. One part that was amusing was when he broke the guys arm through the door giving him a compound fracture. OK. As the action goes on we are treated to gobs of blood, really fake blood. Too say it looked poorly made is and understatement. The acting is totally non existent in this film. I don't expect much from a film of this caliber anyway as long as the action is good, but it wasn't and as expected the dubbing is extremely poor. Was it my imagination or did they dub the Asian go go dancer with a black accent? As expected from a 70's wardrobe you'll be in stitches laughing at some of the trends and nasty women put forth for the gratuitous nudity that comes with these flicks. Also why would the mafia be so obvious and all where black trench coats and hats all the time? Don't try and hide it now. The characters were stupid as well. The pimp club owner's one of whom is decked out in a Japanese pimp suit and the other who has a taste for bores head looks like fat hippie. Also one last thing that bothered me throughout the film was the awful music with some woman whaling. It was very annoying.Overall this is a terrible film by both martial arts standards and good movie making. That doesn't mean that it's not entertaining. With a film made so poorly it's hard not to laugh through most of this film, if you can stomach it. This was an old favorite watch with my best friend. If it was purely bad I would give one star, but the laughs it delivers bumps it up. 4 out 10.