Film Review: The Old Guard
Quiet Moments Anchor The Old Guard’s Predictable Beats
Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights) switches up genres with a blockbuster adaptation of Greg Rucka’s comic book, The Old Guard. A tale of immortal warriors inducting a new member into their ranks, Netflix’s The Old Guard suffers from a thin plot and a largely forgettable villain, but the film’s quieter moments shine, tied together with great performances from Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne. Minor spoilers ahead…
With Netflix’s The Old Guard, Gina Prince-Bythewood - a director more widely known for excellent character-driven dramas such as Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights - molds an otherwise cookie-cutter actioner into an exploration of loneliness and the fight against an invisible system. And while the film is hamstrung by its paper-thin plot and uninteresting villain, the ebbs and flows of its thoughtful character moments make it a cut above your standard action movie. An adaptation of comics scribe Greg Rucka’s series of graphic novels, The Old Guard centers around a coterie of secretive immortal warriors that have lived for centuries. Riding from life to life covertly righting wrongs, these ancient do-gooders are imbued with as much ennui as they are with heroism; they may be saving lives, but they are also saddled with one undeniable truth - that immortality kind of sucks.
Led by Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), or Andy for short, the titular Old Guard (Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli) has spent centuries defusing bombs, rescuing refugees, and fighting the good fight. Cleverly opening in media res with yet another one of the team’s “deaths” (this time under a hail of gunfire), The Old Guard then rewinds to detail their double-cross by a duplicitous yet conflicted G-man named Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). The film’s inciting salvo also makes it clear that while our heroes are practically immortal, their pain is still very real - bullets are ejected from riddled flesh, and shattered bones excruciatingly snap back into place. It isn’t before long that these ageless warriors are thrown their first big curveball: Copley has recorded their miraculous resurrections on video on behalf of his benefactor, an evil Martin Shkreli-lite pharma-bro named Merrick (Harry Telling, Harry Potter’s Dudley Dursley), looking to make billions off the secret to immortality by conducting some nasty human experiments. Complicating matters even further is the appearance of a new immortal, Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a U.S. marine in Afghanistan that has just lived through her first experience with non-death.
“Gina Prince-Bythewood…molds an otherwise cookie-cutter actioner into an exploration of loneliness and the fight against an invisible system.”
First and foremost, The Old Guard is an action movie, and it acquits itself nicely in that regard. The fight choreography is clean, balletic, and viscerally brutal, and the months of preparation the cast underwent to study a laundry list of different martial arts is palpable. The action is also shot with a refreshing focus and intent, never resorting to the rapid-fire cuts that have plagued lesser brawlers. But where The Old Guard truly shines is in its quieter moments. Never afraid to take a beat and just spend some time with its characters, The Old Guard allows its able cast to breathe and come across as real people with relatable problems. Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne, in particular, work in tandem as the film’s beating heart; Andy as reluctant mentor and Nile as reluctant disciple is a dynamic that just plain works, largely due to Greg Rucka’s screenplay adapted from his own source material. The rest of the team are also given chances to shine: Matthias Schoenaerts’ dry and sarcastic Booker carries a surprising amount of the narrative’s emotional weight, and the duo of Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli share some great chemistry as eternal lovers who met on opposite sides of an ancient battlefield.
However, The Old Guard is a far cry from flawless. Especially when compared to the deep and rich storytelling of Rucka’s original comic, much of the film feels…fleeting. Intriguing pages dealing with the team’s exploits throughout history - the Crusades, the Revolutionary War, the World Wars - are some of the best parts of the graphic novels, but are only given the briefest expository dumps in the film. These glaring omissions are most felt with the Joe and Nicky characters, who detail their initial meeting as sworn enemies on the battlefield, only to discover their love for one another as soulmates through their inability to die. It’s a great origin for two great characters, but to only hear of it and not see it is a shame. It would be less egregious if the present-day story was up to par, but Harry Telling’s Merrick is as uninteresting as any villain can be - a sniveling, opportunistic, two-dimensional mustache-twirler, there’s little interiority to the character to make The Old Guard’s primary conflict compelling in any way. Also underserved is Chiwetel Ejiofor, who swings way under his weight class in a role that’s meant to be measured and conflicted, but only comes across as rushed and perfunctory.
The Old Guard is teeming with potential. From a final product that has great characters, slick action set-pieces, and just the right amount of breathing room for the audience to connect with its narrative, it’s obvious that Gina Prince-Bythewood and Greg Rucka are able to gather the right ingredients for a truly great genre flick. Unfortunately, much of The Old Guard feels withheld and constipated, as if it’s too afraid to give up the goods that everyone wants to see. From its post-credits scene and its unwillingness to show any extended flashbacks, there’s an obvious case of milking anticipation for the film’s surefire sequel, but this clearly works against the story we have right here, right now. The Old Guard remains at odds with itself: all the pieces are in place to deliver the next great action franchise, it just needs to actually take off.
