Bodyguard Episode 1 Subtitles

[Gaetan Boren]

QuentinTarantino, the old rascal: He obviously didn't pick up the (alleged) Bible quote Ezekiel 25:17 from Pulp Fiction in the holy book, but it comes from the US version of the film we're talking about in this article. Karate Kiba or Bodyguard Kiba was made in 1973 shortly before Sonny Chiba's mega-success as The Street Fighter. The film is based on a manga by Ikki Kajiwara and naturally provided a nice vehicle for Chiba, who portrays a similarly overpowering character here as in his subsequent hit. In the 90s, Takashi Miike produced three new adaptations of the material.

There are two main versions of the film, but they differ even more fundamentally in terms of content than we can naturally reproduce here in the report. The English dubbing is extremely unique in this case: While Chiba is a karate master in the original who wants to bring his martial art to America and build up a bodyguard business on the side, so to speak, in the US version he is a typical loner hero who consistently stands up to drug-related crime. Any philosophy about karate and approaches influenced by Chiba's real master Masutatsu Oyama are more or less consistently ignored in favor of a conventional action story.

And the other changes can be categorized in the same way. On the one hand, there is additional material, which should provide more appeal in the West with references to Bruce Lee and American martial artists as guest stars. And that includes the cool quote at the beginning. On the other hand, dialogue scenes have been cut, most of which are about Chiba's karate mission. Dramatic climaxes towards the end with the two women at Chiba's side have also been cut.

There weren't many international releases yet and on DVDs in English-speaking countries, the US version was of course usually more common - often nastily zoomed to full screen and of lower VHS quality. Since March 25, 2024, a highly recommended Blu-ray set has once again been available in the UK from Eureka Entertainment, which includes both versions of the film and also Part 2. As can be guessed from a few moments with burnt-in Japanese subtitles, the US version was apparently reconstructed on the basis of the HD master of the original uncut version.

SAM KILEY, Reporter: [voice-over] I had come to Iraq in February to cover the war everyone knew was coming. We had decided to position ourselves on the northern front, in the part of Iraq that had been controlled by the Kurds since the first Gulf war. In the weeks I spent in Kurdistan, I would discover a land and a people haunted by Saddam Hussein.

Fifteen years ago, his regime began a campaign of ethnic cleansing and extermination against the Kurds. Saddam called it the "Anfal", Arabic for "the spoils of war." The spoils he was after were the oil fields near the Kurdish city of Kirkuk. In 1988, Saddam began to drive the Kurds out of the area. His war planes attacked Halabja and 50 other villages with chemical weapons, killing thousands. Now, 15 years later, I come across one of the survivors, a blind woman named Khadija.

KHADIJA: [through interpreter] I was in my village, Geza, when they used the chemical weapons. My eyes were burning, and I was scratching them. Meanwhile, the men who were clever threw themselves into the water, but I couldnt do it since I was already blind. All this happened in an afternoon. And that is what happened to my eyes. I have lost four members of my family. Saddam used chemical weapons on us, and he left us blind to the world.

SAM KILEY: Saddams Anfal campaign went well beyond the use of gas. Between February and August, 1988, 120,000 Kurdish men, women and children were rounded up. Those who were not executed in public simply disappeared.

You could feel the lingering pain of Saddams brutal campaign everywhere in Kurdistan. In a refugee camp close to the front line, I run into another victim of Saddams ethnic cleansing. Her name is Nabath. Fifteen years ago, her village near Kirkuk was destroyed and she was arrested.

SAM KILEY: [voice-over] As the war draws near, I move closer to the front and link up with a group of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Theyre part of the PUK, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

COMMANDER RASHID: [through interpreter] Because we are a nation that has been massacred. Tonight we have counted 100 villages around here that have been destroyed. And for 15 years, we have been exiles from our own land.

SAM KILEY: [voice-over] The Peshmerga are itching for battle, dreaming of their return to Kirkuk, where Saddam has resettled their city with Arabs from southern Iraq, who have taken over their homes. The Peshmerga believe if they can capture the city and its vital oil fields, they can fulfill their ancient dream of an independent Kurdish nation.

[voice-over] By now, U.S. forces had already taken Baghdad, and Iraqi resistance here on the northern front is crumbling. We spot a group of POWs being marched out of the trenches. In the previous few nights, wed seen Iraqi soldiers being shot at by their own side.

SAM KILEY: [voice-over] The Peshmerga promised me that they would look after the Iraqi prisoners. But after I moved on towards Kirkuk, my translator, who was left behind, saw six POWs give themselves up and put their hands in the air. Kurdish fighters in an ambulance stopped, got out and shot four of the six dead. Two men survived by hiding in a culvert.

[voice-over] Further up the highway, the advance has met unexpected resistance. Two Kurdish fighters have just been killed in an Iraqi ambush. Falling back, the special forces call in B-52 bombers and F-18 jets to clear the way.

[on camera] There is an air strike. Its just coming in onto into Leylan, where we were ambushed about an hour ago. We think weve just been bombed by the Americans about 100 yards back. People are now scattering off. Omar? Wheres Omar?

[voice-over] Kirkuks Kurds, about 45 percent of the population, are delighted to see the Americans and the Peshmerga. But the citys Arabs and the Turkish-speaking Turcomen are keeping a low profile.

SAM KILEY: During the first 24 hours of liberation, Kirkuk is in chaos. The Kurds vent their outrage over the atrocities committed against them by Saddams regime. Inside the former headquarters of the secret police, I find dozens of former Kurdish prisoners anxious to demonstrate how they were tortured.

BEARDED MAN: [subtitles] This was for electric shocks. Its like a hook. They put it on my ears. I was tortured here for six months. They gave me electric shocks on my feet, my ears, my penis.

Documents and life histories of people and the histories of their deaths are now strewn all over the road, in this car park. A hundred and eighty-two thousand missing Kurds. Some of the answers as to what happened to them will be lying around the floor here.

[voice-over] There is gunfire all over the city as the Kurds take revenge against the Baathist regime, setting off a wave of chaos and looting that terrifies the Arabs and the Turcomen. I follow up reports that Arabs are being forced out of their homes in Divas, a middle-class neighborhood built by Saddam for his military elite.

[on camera] A lot of houses have been taken by the PUK and other Peshmerga that have been abandoned by their officer owners and marked. Each house has been marked, daubed in paint by one or another Kurdish group laying claim to them.

ARAB: I [unintelligible] from Saddam. I paid for that. They do not have the right to kick the Arabs outside. This is a [unintelligible] misunderstanding between them and us. So it is not his home.

[on camera] Were just coming to a village which was settled by people known as the Bidoon, stateless people trapped in 1991 on the wrong side of the border in the war between the allies and Iraq. Theyre desert-dwelling Bedouin. They were given citizenship of Iraq and then pretty much dumped up here. Unbeknownst to them, they were put into the front line of an ethnic war between Saddam and the Kurds.

[voice-over] Saddam wanted to use this tribe, the al Shumaar, as a buffer against the Kurds. He gave them free homes, free land and newly irrigated fields. Marzouka is one of her husbands three wives. There are 15 children in the family, and now theyve all been forced out of their home.

MARZOUKA: [through interpreter] They said we couldnt stay there. This village is theirs, and you have to leave. Whoever refuses to leave will have their head chopped off. We tried to take our furniture, but they pointed their guns at us and kicked us out.

SAM KILEY: [voice-over] The Peshmerga fighters who liberated Kirkuk had promised that there would be no revenge for the Anfal, only justice. But here, away from the city center, women and children are now being caught up in what looks like ethnic cleansing in reverse.

SAM KILEY: [voice-over] Eventually, the tribal leaders get a piece of paper guaranteeing that they can stay in their village. But thousands of Arabs are asking the Americans for help. There are only about 50 Green Berets on the ground in a city of half a million. Kurds are coming home and finding Arabs in their houses. The Arabs look to the Americans for protection, and its a thankless task.

SAM KILEY: [on camera] The lady in the purple dress says she was ethnically cleansed from this home about four months ago and became a refugee in nearby Chamchamal, a Kurdish-held town. But the Arabic ladys saying shes been here for years. The Arabic lady was told by the Kurdish ladys husband that she would have to move out or shed be killed. The U.S. special forces have found a lot of weaponry here, so its obviously owned by a Peshmerga, or at least now occupied by a Peshmerga.

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