Theme: Bodyguarding

The Jungle Cruise (2021) – Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt

This Disney movie is like a more mature and slightly better made version of Journey 2 The Mysterious Island (2012) which also starred Dwayne Johnson.

The Jungle Cruise (2021) stars Dwayne Johnson as a ship captain for hire, and Emily Blunt as a woman seeking a legendary miracle cure from a plant hidden deep in the Amazon jungle. The chemistry between Dwayne and Emily is pretty good here. Her tag-along ‘brother’ played by Jack Whitehall is less entertaining but plays his role adequately. Jesse Plemons does a decent job as the main baddie.

By near the half way mark, this movie looks set for a Bang Average rating, which is markedly better than Journey 2, mainly because it’s more mature (while still a bit childish) but also because it’s generally a better production, with better humour. Having said that, it goes sharply downhill around the middle, as there’s a mix of extended boring patches and disgusting patches. It eventually gets a bit better again, but never really re-attains the levels of fun and enthusiasm as it had earlier on. For this reason, plus the fact it’s a bit off-genre, I’m going to rate it just So-So for the action hero movie fan, which is just one level above Journey 2 in the end.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) – Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Dolph Lundgren and Udo Kier

This movie features Hackers style music & visuals, which is not surprising since it’s from the same year (1995).

It also features agents in long black leather coats, and probably inspired many things about The Matrix, except that this movie is about the data being stored inside a cybernetically enhanced human, rather than the human’s mind being captured by a virtual matrix. Although there is one woman who lives on in a virtual realm after dying, like a kind of AI. Keanu Reeves‘s character Johnny even does a bit of Tai Chi in this movie, early on, to help cope with brain capacity overload.

Dina Meyer plays Jane, the cybernetically enhanced bodyguard Johnny hires to save his life and help him get where he needs to be. They become quite close.

A youngish Dolph Lundren (in his mid to late 30s) with long messy hair plays one of the main baddies.

Udo Kier (the pureblood burnt in the sun, in Blade) plays one of the main characters early on, who double crosses Johnny then is killed by the Yakuza when Johnny gets away.

This movie was probably great in its day, and is still quite memorable but the pace is a bit slow and the action is a bit mild by the best of modern standards. Still, the acting quality is real even if they seem to be slightly winging it with a shallow plot and loose script put together on the fly.

By half way through, this movie looks set for a Below Average rating, but that’s no knock on the acting level, it’s more due to the datedness of the special effects and the tameness of adrenaline, and with all that considered, it’s quite a respectable rating. Some bits are of course better than others. But the second hour is very trashy throughout — barely watchable in fact. So I think a final score of So-So is plenty fair, if not generous.

Security (2017) – Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley and Cung Le

This movie gets off to a subtly intriguing start, managing to build a bit of an atmosphere quite well.

Although the first half of the movie is quite creative, the second half doesn’t really develop the plot any further — it’s basically a set of related scenes, in 1 building, the whole way through after the first half hour. The action is frequent but it’s also quite gritty, so all in all I have to rate it Bang Average and if anything that’s a slight over-rating due to the genre being very good even if the plot is gravely lacking.

Although a bit aged, Antonio Banderas pulled off a few of his old Desperado type moves. Ben Kingsley was a convincing baddie – no doubt a psychopath in real life – with vibes of Anton LeVey the satanist. And Cung Le didn’t get much screen time but what he did was to a high standard even by his own standards.

John Wick (2014) – Keanu Reeves

Utterly boring first 10 minutes — highly skippable. To say this movie is slow to get going would be an understatement.

By half way in the action has become interesting. But by half way through it’s clear that the movie is still quite hollow — lacking depth of characters or plot. Endless plain combat scenes laced with disco lights and death metal music, and monotonous discussions between action scenes, doesn’t really constitute a good movie in my view — for this reason I give it a Below Average rating, contrary to all the marketing hype around this movie series. It’s like a messy version of Hitman, without the atmosphere, without the attractive woman, and pretty much without anything whatsoever.

Sequels

If you love this movie, you’re in luck because there are many sequels.

The first three movies are all on a similar level — that’s John Wick (2014) and John Wick Chapter 2 (2017) and John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019).

Then the fourth movie — John Wick Chapter 4 (2023) — and the spinoff that followed — Ballerina (2025) — were both slightly better — I rated them Bang Average.

John Wick Chapter 2 (2017) – Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne

The first 20 minutes of this video are a reminder of everything that was wrong with the last movie — pure mindless violence, with no plot or concept behind it. And that’s coming from a Keanu Reeves fan.

By 45 minutes in, Wick’s been given his mission and starts preparing for it, and we start to meet the woman he’s tasked with killing. Literally nothing else has happened in this movie yet. By an hour in, he’s done the job, and back at the hotel, drinking with the guy who was trying to kill him.

By 75 minutes in, there’s an open contract out on John Wick — every assassin in the network is not gunning for him, and things have just become interesting — but it took more than half the movie to get here, and that’s the length of a short movie in itself.

I’m going to rate this movie Below Average, on a par with the original and for all the same reasons.

85 minutes in we meet an overweight Laurence Fishburne in some kind of Matrix cast reuniting.

John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019) – Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne

This movie follows on seamlessly from the last one, as if it’s one double length movie — similar to The Matrix 2 & 3 in this regard.

This movie gets off to a much quicker start than he previous two, although John Wick, played by Keanu Reeves, seems to have found himself in quite a dilemma from the outset, and the violence is rather longwinded, hollow & chaotic. A bit of plot wouldn’t go a miss here.

40 minutes in, while Wick is seeking refuge, we meet a middle aged Halle Berry.

Interesting plot twist 90 minutes in as Wick & Winston go up against the High Table from their deconsecrated hotel. It’s at this point that the movie looks set to earn a higher rating than those before it, but 90 minutes is already the length of a short movie, so surely it’s too little too late and this movie deserves a rating equal to the previous two: Below Average. In the end, Below Average it is, since even after the interesting plot twist, there’s so little to this movie but mindless longwinded violence.

John Wick Chapter 4 (2023) – Keanu Reeves

This movie is a good half hour longer than any previous John Wick movie — it’s nearly 3 hours long! And the others had little plot between their very longwinded hollow violence scenes, so let’s hope this one isn’t just an extra dose of the same.

This movie kicks off with a very basic continuation of the very cool cliffhanger the previous movie ended on. The first 20 minutes proceed to indoctrinate us toward wimpy subservience to authority and to political correctness, to the detriment of our personal standards.

By 20 minutes in we’ve already met Keanu Reeves (John Wick), a fat old Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus from The Matrix), an ugly old Donnie Yen (from the Ip Man movies), Ian McShane (New York’s Continental Hotel Manager from the previous John Wick movies), Bill Skarsgård (who looks like a secret son of Steve Buscemi) and Hiroyuki Sanada (from Mortal Kombat 2021, and the planned 2026 sequel — as well as The Wolverine 2013 — and 47 Ronin 2013 alongside Keanu — acting here as Osaka Japan’s Continental Hotel Manager).

Soon we’ll also meet Scott Adkins (who should need no introduction) and by 25 minutes in we also meet Marko Zaror (from Undisputed III 2010 alongside Scott Adkins) who really shines in his role here — Zaror may even be the understated star of this show.

Donnie Yen’s been given quite a hotshot role here, as a blind man who fights better than practically anyone else, but he doesn’t impress me personally — he’s got quite a fish face on him, like Elon Musk and (Musk’s possible secret father) Pol Pot. Considering his star-power vs stardom imbalance, I’d expect he’s half Jewish, and the lead female in this movie probably is too, for similar reasons. Indeed, these Hollywood guys like to keep it in the family, even while representing different races with the help of their half-breed relatives who so often stick out like sore thumbs due to their lack of true talent.

In the end, I rate this movie Bang Average which is a level above all the previous John Wick movies since it has a slightly more interesting plot than those before it — it’s not just long scenes of hollow violence this time round, there’s a bit more to it. Still a bit thin, but not quite as bad as the others were. It has several new interesting characters too. Well done to the John Wick team for the improvement — this saga was a slow burner — hopefully they can improve it further if they ever make a fifth movie.

Vanguard (2020) – Jackie Chan

Vanguard tells the story of a well resourced private security company specialising in VIP protection, headed up by Jackie Chan, on a mission to protect a VIP and his daughter from some equally well resourced & determined criminals.

Although not always concise, this movie does contain some good action, good actors and a good concept — and has a good pace in patches. Unfortunately though, it is watered down with too much boring filler dialog between the good bits.

By the end of the first half, and by the very end, this movie consistently warrants a score of Above Average.

Jackie took a step down in this movie — he had a lot less screen time than usual, and gave lots of time to the young guns in his crew — they were all pretty good too, but none of them strikingly memorable.

The Courier (2019) – Olga Kurylenko

This movie is a classic example of excitement mixed with boredom. On the one hand it’s got some very cool action and backstory, while on the other hand it’s got a very one-dimensional plot – they don’t even leave the one parking lot for the vast majority of the movie. Of course it’s not all shot in one take and one scene, but it’s pretty much one stageset for the whole movie with the exception of the very beginning and the very end. Naturally, this makes it a bit boring throughout, even if it’s also quite exciting thanks to a good genre, a good lead actress (the beautiful Olga Kurylenko from Hitman, although she’s now pushing 40), plus a reasonable supporting cast and respectable screenplay & cinematography. But whatever happened to the plot! For this reason, even while it’s got potential to be rated a lot higher with a bit more scene diversity, it’s ultimately been dragged down to a Below Average in my view. I mean it’s not ‘bad’ bad, but it’s not ‘very good’ either. There’s a few gory scenes in the back half too – beyond unnecessary for the smooth action hero fan, but Hollywood can’t help itself with stuff like that can it.

The Marksman (2021) – Liam Neeson

The first few minutes are boring. The next few minutes are depressing – even hard to watch. By the 15th minute, we meet the family that includes the boy who will become the co-star of the show, but it’s still quite miserable and hard to watch thus far.

The interesting stuff begins around half an hour in, when the boy whose life he saved, who lost his mother in a firefight at the border, seems to have been pursued by the cartel members from the border, and Liam Neeson‘s character changes his mind and decides to rescue the boy even though it would be easy to dismiss the situation and say he’s probably safe in the hands of the border force.

It gets a bit more interesting near the end of the first hour, as the police pull him over on the highway and it turns out the copper was paid off by the cartel. But Neeson susses it and escapes, and now he knows how real the situation is, and decides to take the fight to them.

That’s pretty much the movie in a nutshell – there’s a few action scenes but aside from that it’s generally quite slow, boring and a bit depressing.

As such, I rate it So-So, and that’s probably being kind. A couple levels down from Bang Average. One level better than Watchable, although I could also justify rating it just Watchable. The rare good bits, combined with the slightly compelling story and the respectable acting & cinematography save it from the dustbin even though it’s got a terribly simple script and is quite boring and depressing for the most part, especially if you’ve seen it before and recall some of the storyline.

Derailed (2002) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Derailed is train hijacking movie a twist – the twist being there’s also a contagion released on the train. It’s a bit like Under Siege 2 in how there’s an elusive good guy (Van Damme instead of Seagal) taking out all the hijackers one by one. And it’s a bit like Transporter 2 in how it pushes contagion theory with all the usual trappings.

It gets off to a low budget but attention sustaining beginning, then it gets extremely one dimensional in the second half when the contagion is released. Still, with decent acting and interesting cast members, I rate this movie somewhere between So-So and OK. On a par with other semi-weak Van Damme movies like Cyborg, Death Warrant and Double Team, all of which have a similar balance of entertainment and unpleasantry in their own unique ways.

This movie also features Van Damme’s real life son, Kris, who plays Van Damme’s character’s son in this movie, and shows off some of his own high kicks early on.

The Defender / The Bodyguard from Beijing (1994) – Jet Li

The Bodyguard from Beijing (1994)

Also called The Defender, there’s some very cool action in this movie from the serious bodyguard character played by Jet Li, accompanied by some juvenile humour from the policeman played by Kent Cheng, making it an entertaining movie on several fronts. It’s an action hero movie with a touch of comedy and a touch of romance. Christy Chung plays the lead female role – a spoilt woman who witnessed a murder and needs protecting from some powerful criminals but doesn’t appreciate the danger initially, however her rich boyfriend does so he hires the best bodyguard money can buy, played very well by Jet Li.

The English dubbing is poor but tolerable – much better than subtitles.

Overall I rate it (upper) OK. Almost on a par with those movies rated Decent but the dubbing issue lets it down slightly, as does the regularly cheesy acting.

The Bodyguard (1992) – Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston

The Bodyguard (1992) stars Kevin Costner (from Waterworld) as an ex secret service bodyguard called Frank Farmer who has previously protected multiple presidents before leaving to earn more money in the private sector protecting celebrities. This movie begins with him being convinced to take on the job of protecting a bit of a diva – a famous singer & actress called Rachel Marron in this movie, who is actually played by the real Whitney Houston, in her late 20s here – this was her first movie and was a massive box office success.

The soundtrack album to this movie was an even bigger success – to this day it remains the best-selling movie soundtrack album of all time, as well as the best-selling album by any female ever (according to Wikipedia, which doesn’t cover undisclosed history & territories).

Whitney’s character is initially quite reckless, as are most of her team, while Kevin’s character is trying to organise security in a necessarily pedantic manner. So initially they don’t click, but they eventually come to appreciate each other and become romantically involved. This is well timed, since there’s a very real threat to the celebrity’s life in the form of a clever & careful stalker.

I rate this movie as OK. It’s quite fun and captivating if you’ve not seen it before and are a fan of the lead cast members as well as the core concept and genre of this movie. Execution is a bit old-fashioned – it’s a bit of an old drama, and it goes on for 2 hours, but is generally well made, and there’s still a healthy dose of intermittent action in it.

Before knowing it was Whitney playing the lead female in this movie, I was thinking she has a confident sleepy-smokey eyed gaze very similar to Zhilei Zhang’s boxing trainer, Shaun George. They have very similar eyes.

The suspiciously similar deaths of Whitney and her only child

Sadly, Whitney died in her bathtub in 2012, aged only 48. Allegedly due to accidental downing, with cocaine a contributing factor. Her only child, Bobbi Kristina Brown, also died in a bathtub, just 3 years later, in 2015, aged only 22, allegedly due to cocaine and alcohol. Nick Gordon, Whitney’s adopted son, and eventual boyfriend of Bobbi, was held liable for Bobbi’s death in 2017, then died of a heroine overdose himself in 2020, aged 30.