Why I will always love The Bodyguard

When famous singer Rachel Mar­ron (Whit­ney Hous­ton) asks her new body­guard Frank Farmer (Kevin Cost­ner) to accom­pa­ny her on an evening out, he takes her to see his favourite film: Kurosawa’s 1961 samu­rai clas­sic, Yojim­bo. As they leave the cin­e­ma, Rachel asks Frank how many times he’s seen it. ​‘Six­ty-two times,’ he replies.

I don’t think I’ve quite seen The Body­guard six­ty-two times, but it might be the film I’ve rewatched more than any oth­er. Ever since my mum showed it to me in my mid-teens (one of her own count­less rewatch­es), I’ve returned to the film time and time again for its unique – and unique­ly ​‘90s – blend of sus­pense, dra­ma, action and romance. This is a film that does every­thing, the way Hol­ly­wood films aspired to back then, before scripts got thin­ner and genre bound­aries became so rigid­ly defined. It’s the rea­son the film can with­stand count­less view­ings – The Body­guard is a movie for every moment, that sat­is­fies on every level.

But one glance at Rot­ten Toma­toes and it appears alarm­ing­ly under­rat­ed. One major crit­ic recent­ly described the film in an anniver­sary piece as ​‘a hokey yet irre­sistible roman­tic fan­ta­sy’. It’s a view as ubiq­ui­tous as it is unjust – to dis­miss The Body­guard as a light­weight romance is to only go skin-deep. Beneath the love sto­ry lie lay­ers of heavy­weight film­mak­ing. Much like An Offi­cer and a Gen­tle­man is bet­ter remem­bered for the end-scene pow­er bal­lad rather than the film’s grit­ty sto­ry­telling (por­tray­ing the strug­gles of Rea­gan-era work­ing-class Amer­i­ca), it’s pos­si­ble that Houston’s icon­ic ver­sion of ​‘I Will Always Love You’ dis­torts people’s per­cep­tion and mem­o­ry of The Body­guard. While the song and per­for­mance are a big part of what makes the movie great, I’ve always felt there’s much more to it than that.

This ​‘hokey’ film begins with gun­fire. We join Frank moments after he’s saved the life of a client. But this also isn’t action as we under­stand the genre today. The scene is a som­bre one, a slow crane retreat­ing beneath Alan Silvestri’s plain­tive score. For Frank, there’s noth­ing glam­orous about what he’s done – it’s just anoth­er day at the office.

The cast­ing and per­for­mances are pitch per­fect, as is screen­writer Lawrence Kasdan’s immac­u­late char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Costner’s every­man looks and ques­tion­able hair­cut per­fect­ly suit some­one who neglects his own life to bet­ter serve the lives of oth­ers. He doesn’t have the physique of Daniel Craig or Chris Hemsworth, nor does he need it. Farmer is a more com­plex kind of male hero. Cost­ner plays him qui­et­ly (as he often does) with metic­u­lous under­state­ment and sim­mer­ing intel­li­gence, imbu­ing the char­ac­ter with equal parts hard­ness and humour.

Like his hair­cut, Frank is prag­mat­ic and hum­ble, resist­ing any attempts to glo­ri­fy who he is or what he does. When Devaney (Bill Cobbs) approach­es him to be Rachel’s body­guard because he’s ​‘the best’, Frank replies, ​‘There’s no such thing.’ In response to Rachel’s ques­tion if he was tough when he played col­lege foot­ball, he says plain­ly, ​‘No, I was fast.’ In the begin­ning, when a for­mer client asks if Frank’s hands ever shake, he gives a human answer: ​‘Some­times.’

The film presents us with a refresh­ing mod­el of a good man – a mod­el Frank learned from his father, played by the affa­ble Ralph Waite (‘I nev­er hit him, ever,’ Herb tells Rachel’s fam­i­ly over din­ner). This is a film about pro­tect­ing, not hurt­ing. In a par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy­able scene, we watch Frank effort­less­ly out­match Rachel’s old body­guard, Tony (Mike Starr), simul­ta­ne­ous­ly prov­ing his skill while deesca­lat­ing a tense sit­u­a­tion. In the age of John Wick, it’s refresh­ing to watch a fight that exists not for the spec­ta­cle but for the sto­ry (in a won­der­ful char­ac­ter moment, Frank cleans up some bro­ken crock­ery mid-fight). The one time we wit­ness Frank dis­play real, uncon­trolled vio­lence, after one-too-many barbs from Rachel, it’s fright­en­ing to see a char­ac­ter we admire for his restraint aban­don the care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed discipline.

Frank’s char­ac­ter has always res­onat­ed with me on a per­son­al lev­el, but with­out Houston’s por­tray­al of Rachel, the film would sim­ply nev­er have become the phe­nom­e­non it is today. Her bold, self-ref­er­en­tial per­for­mance as a pop star nav­i­gat­ing the pit­falls of fame is at once spell­bind­ing and heart­break­ing. It takes some­thing spe­cial to make a char­ac­ter with such obvi­ous unlike­able qual­i­ties so like­able, her vital­i­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty prov­ing the per­fect coun­ter­point to Costner’s cau­tious­ness. It’s hard to believe this was Houston’s first major act­ing role con­sid­er­ing how effort­less it all seems. The obvi­ous par­al­lels between Rachel’s life and her own – par­tic­u­lar­ly the life-threat­en­ing dan­gers that come with star­dom – unfor­tu­nate­ly serve to deep­en the film fur­ther, adding lay­ers of por­tent and meaning.

The Body­guard, unlike many mod­ern-day block­busters, is a mas­ter­class in that oft-repeat­ed writ­ing max­im: ​“show, don’t tell”. We know lit­tle of Frank – just enough to under­stand his moti­va­tions. What we do know, we learn grad­u­al­ly, and we learn through obser­va­tion. When he inspects Rachel’s secu­ri­ty for the first time, we are shown his exper­tise. When he greets his father, an entire rela­tion­ship is encap­su­lat­ed in their first lines to each oth­er. (‘Lake’s a lit­tle low,’ says Frank, shak­ing his dad’s hand. ​‘It’ll rise when it thaws,’ says Herb). As Cost­ner him­self puts it on the DVD fea­turette: ​‘We had a song that real­ly tied it all togeth­er, but you can’t just get a great song, and The Body­guard was very much about lan­guage.’ I think Costner’s not just refer­ring to the words spo­ken by the char­ac­ters here, but the script as a whole. Kasdan’s lean writ­ing and lay­ered dia­logue turn a straight­for­ward sto­ry into some­thing as keen and pen­e­trat­ing as one of Farmer’s throw­ing knives.

It’s easy to love The Body­guard. Part of that comes from the romance, and part of that is the song that ties it all togeth­er. But this isn’t why I’ll keep rewatch­ing it. Sure, when the moment comes, I’ll turn the music up like every­one else, but until then I’ll put the sound­track to one side and lis­ten to the film’s lan­guage: the dia­logue, the act­ing, the pho­tog­ra­phy. Because when something’s this rich and well-craft­ed, it doesn’t mat­ter if you’ve seen it six­ty-two times and you know what’s about to hap­pen – it’s just a joy to watch it unfold.