After the 1990s, especially after the 1997 financial crisis in Hong Kong, Hong Kong films have embarked on a steady decline. After China joined the WTO, it also signed the CEPA agreement, which was considered by Hong Kong filmmakers at that time. After the signing of CEPA, many Hong Kong filmmakers went north, forming a wave in the history of co-production between the mainland and Hong Kong. Some people keep the market atmosphere in Hong Kong movies, some people choose the narrative context of home country preferred by the mainland, and some people are on the road of no return.

Bodyguards and assassins, filmed in 2009, belongs to the second category.

Hong Kong movies seem to be good at creating small plots from the very beginning, even if they are stories under the national and ethnic background, they also like to develop from personal love and hate to the righteousness of home and country. For example, the story that we often think about "Chinese and dogs are not allowed in" is also from personal grievances in the rivers and lakes to national integrity. This seems to be the narrative tradition of Hong Kong movies. So, what if the specified action must talk about the big plot and the big background? Then simply study the character story line and come to a group of portraits.

Bodyguards and assassins is like this. During the democratic revolution, in order to protect Dr. Sun Yat-sen, all talented people in Central Hong Kong also contributed their own strength. There is a story clue behind each of them that can be further refined, but each of them is a point, because here they temporarily gave up their personal grievances to serve the country.

From this point of view, this setting can not only maximize the marginal effect brought by fans watching movies, but also imply the mentality of some filmmakers going north at that time, a kind of psychology of diluting self-service for everyone. Instead of obsessing about whether Hong Kong movies are dead or not, we should take the initiative to correct ourselves and contribute to the prosperity of the whole Chinese film.

From this perspective, "bodyguards and assassins" represents a co-production mentality ten years ago, and is also famous for its strong cast and excellent production team.

Now look back at the actors of that year: Wang Xueyin, who just returned from Mei Lanfang, Ye Fan, who likes to wear super-high waterproof platform, Chris Lee, who hopes to succeed through film transformation, and Nicholas Tse, who has not divorced Cecilia Cheung, are still beautiful, and Jacky Cheung does not have his own expression pack. ...

2009 seems very near, but it seems very far away.