The Bodyguard assessment – Whitney Houston showstopper as resplendent as ever | Movie

In all its irresistible absurdity, this colossal 90s studio film and world smash – like Titanic, mocked by the critics and cherished by the general public – is revived for its thirtieth anniversary. Directed by Mick Jackson, written by Lawrence Kasdan and shot by Andrew Dunn, The Bodyguard does sag a bit right here and there, and Kevin Costner’s relationship with the “cocky black chauffeur” character jars.

However there’s no doubting the powerhouse punch of Whitney Houston’s showcase musical numbers, particularly her passionate, declamatory cowl model of I Will At all times Love You, an initially a brisker and but extra downbeat nation monitor written for Dolly Parton. Right here, it’s radically reimagined – Houston and Costner also have a scene the place they dance in a bar to the unique model, and he or she feedback on what a downer it’s. And, after all, there’s that outrageous huge end on the Academy Awards, the place Houston, enjoying an Oscar nominee, is at risk of being assassinated proper then and there in entrance of the tuxedoed crowd, and solely her gallant bodyguard-lover can save her.

It’s a hokey but irresistible romantic fantasy template, just lately given a makeover by Jed Mercurio within the BBC TV drama Bodyguard with Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes. Costner offers a stolid efficiency as Frank Farmer, a Secret Service agent turned skilled bodyguard haunted by his failure to guard Ronald Reagan from the 1981 assassination attempt on him. Houston performs Rachel Marron, an exquisite but susceptible singer and single mum who has just lately made a break into films, snagging an Oscar nomination for an appearing efficiency (we by no means see a clip of this imaginary movie; the duty of differentiating her fictional appearing makes an attempt from the true ones may need examined Houston severely). Rachel has a creepy and doubtlessly murderous stalker; she receives dying threats, and Frank is known as in as her bodyguard. It seems that the perpetrator has made it into her mansion and masturbated over her mattress – a disturbing element with a Silence of the Lambs tone that isn’t elaborated upon. Frank has to fulfill the varied members of her spiky, rivalrous entourage, all tacitly supplied up as potential “whodunnit” candidates.

Inevitably, after some meet-cute squabbling, Frank and Rachel fall in love, having gone on a date to see Kurosawa’s samurai bodyguard movie Yojimbo – the free inspiration for this movie. (Rachel herself isn’t any cinephile slouch, having primarily based her new video on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.) Stern, unsmiling Frank is the gallant protector of the glamorous but fearful Rachel, and although Costner and Houston’s mutual performances are a bit awkward, there’s a form of sweetness to their apparent incompatibility, in artwork as in life. The Bodyguard continues to be an harmless popcorn pleasure, all the way in which as much as that over-the-top scene on Oscar evening.