The Old Guard (2020)
dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood
Rated: R
image: ©2020 Netflix
Charlize Theron continues her ascent to the throne of Ultimate Action-Movie Hero Badass in The Old Guard, following her star turns in powerhouse action films like Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde. This time out finds Theron sharing her stunt-heavy, fight scene bravura with an ensemble of lesser known, but equally entertaining, actors. The Old Guard is a graphic novel adaptation that overcomes a familiar setup to deliver an energetic, exciting story that finds a way to make its seemingly invincible characters vulnerable. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood packs her movie with several competing aesthetics, and she’s mostly successful in getting them all to work in harmony.
Based on the comic book by Greg Rucka – who also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation – The Old Guard tells the story of Andromache of Scythia, Booker, Joe, and Nicky; four immortals who use their centuries of experience to help others and to try to make the world a better place. If you haven’t seen the film, don’t worry, I didn’t really spoil anything for you. We learn of Andromache (who goes by Andy) and her team’s immortality within the first five minutes of the movie in an intriguing opening sequence. The team becomes aware of a new immortal when they all see her first death in a shared dream.
U.S. marine Nile Freeman, who is serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan, dies after a man her team is searching for slits her throat. Nile makes a miraculous recovery – not even a scar remains – making her fellow soldiers suspicious. Andy and her crew track Nile down to extract her from her old life and to teach her about her new reality.
Except, as these things usually go, Nile isn’t ready to give up all that she’s known. This particular trope is well-worn territory within superhero fare, but director Prince-Bythewood simplifies and energizes it with one expertly constructed fight scene between Theron’s Andy and Kiki Layne’s Nile. It takes place on a cargo plane, and the fight choreography (both here and throughout the movie) is thrilling stuff.
As imagined by Prince-Bythewood and her cinematographers, the dusty, brown worlds of Afghanistan and Sudan – the film’s opening, where we learn about Andy and her team’s unique ability, takes place there – puts us firmly into the aesthetic of a war film. Greg Rucka has focused on the U.S. soldier experience, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, before, most notably in his graphic novel Stumptown and its television adaptation.
What makes The Old Guard a novel idea is mixing that element with a more traditional superhero setup, and adding the existential ennui of characters who have lived hundreds of lifetimes. It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe-meets-The Hurt Locker-meets-Only Lovers Left Alive. In that last film, Jim Jarmusch uses his ironic, offbeat sensibility to give us an arthouse take on what it would really mean to essentially live forever. In The Old Guard, we get a more straightforward version of this; as played by Theron and the rest of the crew, it’s an emotional, rather affecting thought experiment.
The most crucial element that Rucka’s screenplay and Prince-Bythewood’s direction incorporates into the story are real, tangible dramatic stakes. It turns out that these superheroes’ immortality might not be an absolute state of being. The movie also helps humanize these super-humans by making them feel – and consequently want to avoid – pain. And, as we find out in a harrowing flashback sequence about another immortal who is no longer with the group, there are also fates much worse than death.
The picture’s weakest element is its Big Bad. Hunting Andy, Nile, and the rest of the crew is a medical tech entrepreneur who believes that the end of human disease and suffering is locked in the DNA of the immortal heroes. Steven Merrick tells his shareholders that he’s interested in advancing science and ending human frailty, but what he’s really interested in is making a profit from it. He regards the immortals as nothing more than lab rats, and no amount of torture will stand in the way of his potential earnings.
Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely sympathetic to the way Rucka paints the profit-at-all-costs tech entrepreneur mindset, especially when those profits come from bankrupting people who are in dire need of medical treatment. Actor Harry Melling – Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films – plays Merrick essentially, and splendidly, as “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. That’s the real-life villain who heartlessly raised the price of an AIDS drug he held a patent on by 5,000% because he could. Merrick is cartoonish in his dastardliness, a 2D adversary in a movie filled with 3D heroes. As much as I enjoyed the performance, and the skewering of assholes like Shkreli, the only thing Melling is missing is a mustache to twirl.
Aside from the well-staged and masterfully executed action sequences, it’s the human moments that make The Old Guard stand out as a superhero movie. Theron delivers gravitas to Andy, and Kiki Layne brings a kick-ass woman of color to the very center of a superhero narrative. Layne particularly impresses here if you’ve seen her phenomenal, 180°-difference-by-comparison performance as Tish in Barry Jenkins’s emotionally pulverizing If Beale Street Could Talk. There is even a stand-up-and-cheer speech celebrating LGBTQ love involving two of the immortals, Nicky and Joe.
Rucka had it written into his contract that the movie would include a major scene spotlighting Nicky and Joe’s romance from his original comic. Kudos to the writer for making sure a risk averse studio head didn’t axe the scene over fears of alienating potential viewers.
The Old Guard is a fresh take on an idea that’s become well-trod in our MCU-dominated entertainment landscape. Through the meticulous crafting of dramatic stakes, each fight scene remains vital, instead of becoming what so many superhero action sequences devolve into: CGI fights between people who we never worry about actually being hurt, let alone dying. So many of these sequences devolve into a series of what my colleague Josh Larsen calls “the punch-plosion.” Thankfully, that never happens in The Old Guard.
The excessive gun-play in the movie does become a little deadening, especially by the climax. But the film overcomes its weaker elements to stand as an entertaining and invigorating bit of moviemaking. The inevitable franchise set-up comes in the final minutes – and in a mid-credits sequence – of the film. I enjoyed my time with Theron, Layne, and the rest of the crew so much, though, that I was excited at the prospect of spending a few more hours with them in a new adventure.
Why it got 3.5 stars:
The Old Guard is a fun, exciting, and entertaining superhero movie. Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne both stand out particularly as badasses among badasses.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- When it was clear that Theron’s character would be rescuing Layne’s character and showing her the way of immortals, I worried it would turn into a White Savior story. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Layne’s Nile comes to the fore to be every bit as capable and heroic as anyone else in the movie.
- I have a distinct sensibility to single lines of dialog that stand out as clunky, clichéd, or woefully expository in nature. The Old Guard has one, when Andy, speaking to no one, says, “Why does it have to be so goddamned slow the first couple of times?” after one of Nile’s deaths. Yeesh. Couldn’t anyone think of a more artful way to impart that information to the audience?
- The great Chiwetel Ejiofor is mostly wasted with about ten minutes of screen time in The Old Guard. His character should (hopefully) be given more to do in future installments, though.
- There are a few nitpick-y details that might ruin the effect of the movie if you think about them too much. Like that fact that Andy is the oldest of all the immortals, yet they have the accents of their youth, and she, somehow, has a perfect American accent, which didn’t come into being until thousands of years after she was born. But, the movie was good enough that I could overlook those issues relatively easily.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Watched on Netflix. This would have been a good one to see on the big screen, though. I’m wondering if, after the pandemic finally dies down for good, in 2021 or 2022, we’ll see a huge repertory movement in theaters, so we can see in a theatrical setting all those titles we missed during the pandemic.