Review of The Bodyguard, directed by Mick Jackson

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Because I had more time, and a limited income, I spent a lot of time at my local library. It helps to run a book blog and have access to a decent library, and I do get advance copies from publishers here and there. Those usually arrive digitally (which I prefer, as I only have so much room in the world), but I do get the occasional physical advance copy.

What I also love about my local library system though is the access to the DVDs. My sister happens to live with me and owns a BluRay player, so every week I stock up on the new DVDs, or some of the older ones that typically tend to be Criterions, and then sit down to watch a movie while I apply to jobs.

At the time of typing this, which is definitely much earlier than when this is going to go out, I checked out Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard. I’ve always wanted to watch it because of the documentary I saw on Houston, and I remember crying when I watched the documentary because of how sad her ending was.

Let’s get into the review of the movie! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

A pop star and actor has to reluctantly get a bodyguard to protect her from a new stalker, leading to love.

Our main character in this movie is a superstar in the entertainment world: Rachel Marron. She’s a singer, and she’s happened to be an Academy Award nominee in the past as well for her acting work. But things are getting dicey for her when it appears she has a stalker sending her threatening messages on her life, and a bomb even goes off in her dressing room one night.

Despite Rachel’s wishes, her manager decides it’s time to get her protection detail. He hires Frank Farmer, who worked with the Secret Service for several recent presidents in the past few decades. And at first, Frank doesn’t know if he wants this job, as he worked for presidents, not pop stars, and after meeting her, he thinks she’s not taking the threats seriously.

She really isn’t and is brushing them off, but when a riot happens at one of her concerts at night, Frank rescues her from the danger, and then she starts to having some positive feelings towards Frank’s presence. Her old bodyguard though doesn’t really like him there, and they end up getting into a fight at her property one day.

Things escalate between Frank and Rachel after that, and they do end up having sex and sleeping together one night. He goes against his feelings and ends it, as he sees it as a threat to her safety too, which leads her to start acting recklessly. She also starts flirting with one of his former colleagues Greg in an effort to make him jealous.

The stalker emerges again with a phone call, which wakes Rachel up and realize that her situation isn’t the best right now. She decides to go to a cabin in the woods, owned by Frank’s father with Frank, her son, their driver, and her older sister, as a way to escape what’s going on. However, when her son Fletcher is on a motorboat during the day, Frank saves him as it explodes.

Night falls, and her sister Nicki tells Rachel while drunk that she hired a hitman at one point to go after Rachel. However, the stalker is someone from even before that. A gunman then comes into the home and shoots Nicki to death. Frank goes after the guy but fails to stop him before he slips into the woods, then learns that it wasn’t the stalker, who was caught back in the city.

The next big event is the Oscars, and Rachel’s up for Best Actress. Frank gives her a panic button like a cross, but Rachel gets upset while presenting and runs off because she’s embarrassed she needs to be protected like this. She does win Best Actress, but Greg, who is the actual hitman, goes to shoot her. Frank notices it just in time, then takes the bullet before it can reach Rachel.

The audiences freaks out and panic ensues. Greg goes to shoot Rachel again, but Frank guns him down before passing out from his wounds. When he wakes up at the hospital, he bids adieu to Rachel, knowing they can never work out, but then she gets on a plane and tells it to stop. She kisses Frank for the last time before leaving.

The movie ends with her singing “I Will Always Love You” while Frank is still acting as a bodyguard for others.

Overall Thoughts

This movie is so 90s coded, but it was a vibe throughout. I have to say upfront though: I think romance movies can bed one either really well or kind of bad, and I think this movie hits all the right cliches, but is kind of bad. Maybe it was revolutionary back in the day, but as a modern viewer I think it’s just another romance movie.

I only knew of it before watching because of “I Will Always Love You,” but I wonder if the new generations are going to be raised with the same kind of nostalgia for that song, leading to this movie surviving or fading in popular memory.

I don’t regret watching this, but I don’t think I’ll be returning to it in the near future. I think people should watch it though if they’re interested in it; taste is so incredibly subjective at the end of the day.

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.