General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Bodyguards and Assassins (十月围城)

Bodyguards and Assassins (十月圍城) is a 2009 Hong Kong–Chinese historical action film directed by Teddy Chen (陳德森), in which a band of ordinary citizens protects the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen from Qing-dynasty assassins during a visit to Hong Kong. It was the debut production of Cinema Popular, a company founded by producer Peter Chan (陳可辛), Huang Jianxin, and Bona Film Group, and it went on to win eight Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	十月圍城 (Shiyue weicheng)
Release	China and Malaysia December 17–18, 2009; wide Asian release from December 18³^•⁴
Director / producers	Teddy Chan; produced by Peter Chan and Huang Jianxin¹
Budget	$23 million¹
Setting	1905 Hong Kong, on the day of a failed assassination attempt on Sun Yat-sen⁴
Running time	138 minutes⁵
Hong Kong Film Awards	8 wins at the 29th HKFA, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Nicholas Tse), and Best Action Choreography²
China box office	Passed the $40 million mark as of January 3, 2010⁶

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The story takes place in 1905, when the revolutionist Sun Yat-sen visits Hong Kong to discuss plans with Tongmenghui members for overthrowing the Qing dynasty. When assassins sent by the Qing court are discovered, his supporters assemble a group of protectors to get him out of Hong Kong alive.³ The action is concentrated in a single day: assassins surround Hong Kong's Central district, the colonial police are ordered to turn a blind eye to the plot, and the bodyguards fight to the last man to move the revolutionary leader to safety.⁷ A newspaper editor and a tycoon learn of the plot and recruit a small band of ordinary men and women to protect him.⁸

The protectors are outmatched in every way by the killers, and Li Yu-tang's 17-year-old son acts as a decoy for Dr. Sun during the running battle through the city's streets and markets.⁶ Some English-language sources place the visit in 1906 rather than 1905; the film's own marketing and most trade coverage use 1905.³^•⁸

Production

Teddy Chen conceived the project in 1999 as a historical film set in old Hong Kong. After studying a film his friend Peter Chan's father, Chen Tongmin, had made in Taiwan, the 1973 production 赤膽好漢, he settled on the premise of revolutionary martyrs joining forces to protect Sun Yat-sen against Qing assassins, told from the viewpoint of ordinary people.⁹ Chen has said that he turned the single martyr of that earlier film into five or six, and made a deliberate choice that each of them fights for personal reasons rather than for the revolution itself.¹⁰

Cinema Popular's debut. The $23 million film was announced at Filmart in March 2009 as the first production of Cinema Popular, a start-up production and financing outfit, with shooting beginning in early April.¹ Cinema Popular was a joint venture between Peter Chan, Huang Jianxin, and Bona launched that year.⁴ The production built a massive set reproducing 1905 Hong Kong outside Shanghai, which reviewers credited with much of the film's spectacle.⁶

The cast assembles major names from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China: Donnie Yen, Leon Lai, Nicholas Tse, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Wang Xueqi, Simon Yam, Fan Bingbing, Hu Jun, the 7-foot former basketball player Mengke Bateer, and the singer Li Yuchun.¹^•⁸^•¹¹ Cinematography was by Arthur Wong and production design by Kenneth Mak.¹²

Reception and box office

The film opened in China on December 18, 2009, and performed strongly: by January 3, 2010 it had passed the $40 million mark and significantly out-grossed Zhang Yimou's A Simple Noodle Story released the same season.⁶ A trade report in the same period put its accumulated total at more than $35 million (RMB238 million) across China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan, a figure equal to the gross of The Warlords, Peter Chan's previous production.¹³ In Hong Kong it earned HK$13,927,877 in total, ranking third for the week of December 28 to January 3 behind Avatar and Sherlock Holmes.¹⁴ Outside Asia it earned modestly: Box Office Mojo records a Hong Kong gross of $2,138,798, Singapore $1,443,899, Taiwan $1,124,979, and a worldwide international total of about $6.6 million.³

Awards. The film won eight awards at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director for Teddy Chan, Best Supporting Actor for Nicholas Tse, and Best Action Choreography.² Wang Xueqi, playing the tycoon Li Yutang, won Best Actor at the Asian Film Awards and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award, and was nominated for Best Leading Actor at the Golden Horse Awards.¹⁵ Across all bodies the film recorded 25 wins and 56 nominations.¹⁵

Critical response

Reviewers generally praised the action and production values while noting the film's structure. Screen's review described a lengthy first act with almost no fighting, followed by a final hour of wall-to-wall action on the crowded streets of Hong Kong, and singled out a standoff between Donnie Yen's gambler and an assassin played by the Vietnamese kickboxing champion Cung Le.⁶ The Guardian called it Hong Kong's answer to The Magnificent Seven but found it overlong, with the action grinding to a halt to honor each heroic death.¹⁶ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 50% Tomatometer from six critics and a 70% audience score.⁸ IMDb users rate it 6.8 out of 10 from about 9,000 votes.¹⁷

Historical and industrial context

The film is an early example of Hong Kong filmmakers participating in mainland "main melody" productions, the state-aligned genre celebrating revolutionary history. A scholarly account describes it as a "privately run" main melody film, in Peter Chan's own phrase, made as a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, and notes it was often joked about as the Hong Kong version of The Founding of a Republic.¹⁸ Peter Chan later cited the film among the productions through which he built his position in the mainland market, where it took about RMB300 million in China alone by one later accounting.¹⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026