Telokhranitel

The Bodyguard
Directed by	Ali Khamraev
Written by	Ali Khamraev
Starring	Alexander Kaidanovsky Anatoly Solonitsyn Gulcha Tashbaeva Shavkat Abdusalyamov
Music by	Eduard Artemyev
Cinematography	Leonid Kalashnikov Yuri Klimenko Vyacheslav Semin
Production company	Tajikfilm
Release date	1979 (1979)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

The Bodyguard (Russian: Телохранитель, Telokhranitel) is a 1979 Soviet action film released by Tadjikfilm. It is one of the best known of the Red Westerns and directed by the veteran feature and documentary maker, Ali Khamraev.

The Bodyguard is also the title of a 1991 Soviet film directed by Aleksandr Ivanov.

The setting is Central Asia during the Russian civil war. In the post-revolutionary twenties, when the power in European Russia was (officially) "fully in the hands of the workers and peasants", but the fight against the Basmachi rebels was in full swing. When a Red Army detachment captures Sultan Nazar (Anatoly Solonitsyn), the brains behind the Bazmachi contingent, a decision is made to escort urgently the prisoner to the Bukhara province. The difficult mission is entrusted to a grizzled mountain trapper and conscientious revolutionary Mirzo. His expertise is essential to traverse the precarious paths and steep mountain ridges along the way, impossible terrain for the inexperienced. A group consisting of Mirzo (Alexander Kaidanovsky), his brother Kova, the Sultan, his daughter Zaranghis (D. Alimova) and slave Saifulla set off on this journey, pursued doggedly along the way by Fottabek (Shavkat Abdusalyamov), the ruthless new head of the Basmachis. They are forced to fight on the mountain ridges as well as negotiate the natural dangers and harsh elements.