Set in turn-of-the-century Hong Kong, Bodyguards and Assassins is an old school, all star extravaganza the likes of which hasn't been seen in decades. Nominated for more Hong Kong Film Awards than any other movie in history, it broke the bank in Hong Kong and busted the box office wide open in China. It's shot on one of the most impressive outdoor sets ever built, depicting in mindblowingly meticulous detail a dozen square blocks of downtown Hong Kong circa 1906. More importantly, Donnie Yen fights a horse.

The founder of modern day China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, is coming to Hong Kong for a secret meeting but the Qing Empress wants his Republican head on a plate. The call goes out: volunteers are needed to protect Dr. Sun for the few hours he's in town. Chances of survival: low. Eventually, a ragtag bunch of misfits are rounded up: Donnie Yen (IP MAN 1 & 2) is a down-on-his luck cop doing it to get out of debt; Tony Leung Kar-fai is a newspaper publisher looking to get his hands dirty with the real work of revolution; Li Yuchun (winner of the Chinese version of American Idol) is out to avenge her dad; Simon Yam (Echoes of the Rainbow) is a traitor to the Empress hiding in a Chinese Opera company and Mengke Bateer (the NBA's only Mongolian player) is an outcast Shaolin monk looking for a second chance.

Bodyguards and Assassins is more like Gone with the Wind than The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, more martial arts melodrama than straight up action movie. The first hour is all lush exposition, setting up a television season's worth of plots, subplots, emotional arcs and redemption issues. Then hour two begins, Dr. Sun sets foot on Hong Kong soil and all hell breaks loose. Crossbow battles, primitive IEDs, razor-sharp iron fans and a rain of death ninjas keep things moving as the unprepared bodyguards buy Dr. Sun safe passage across Hong Kong, a few feet at a time, paying for every inch of his journey with their blood.

Restricted to just a few city blocks, Bodyguards and Assassins is as epic as Ben Hur and as emotional as grand opera. It's a movie about the men and women who sacrificed themselves for a cause they barely understood, giving their lives for a man they never met, dying for a future they'd never see. Over the course of his lifetime, dozens of bodyguards perished so that Dr. Sun Yat-sen could free China from Imperial rule and even he never knew all their names. Bodyguards and Assassins records them in ten-foot tall letters of fire so that they will never be forgotten.