by Lynn Lee
In my more fanciful moments, I have a pet theory that Charlize Theron is a reincarnated ancient goddess. I’m not just talking about her statuesque beauty, effortless glamour, or seeming immunity to aging. No, I mean her superhuman ability to batter, dirty up, strip down and sometimes strip away that beauty in service of a role…only to reemerge in the same state of impossible physical perfection as before, as if nothing had happened.
Who better, then, to play a female warrior who never dies or grows old and whose wounds heal without a trace? While Theron’s played a lot of certifiable badasses in recent years, she hasn’t often been cast as a bona fide superhero, and the results have been mixed when she has (Aeon Flux is the last that comes to mind, unless you count Hancock). I’m happy to report she finds a good fit with The Old Guard, Netflix’s latest attempt to make us all forget we ever needed to go to a movie theater...
Based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights), The Old Guard centers on a small group of warriors-for-hire who have been around for literally centuries, if not millennia. Their leader, Andromache (Theron), called Andy for short, is the oldest by far, though she never specifies her age; Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), her de facto second in command, fought in the Napoleonic Wars; and the inseparable Joe and Nicky (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli) were soldiers originally on opposite sides of the Crusades who eventually fell in love. They don’t work for free, but neither do they take on jobs for the money; they fight, as one of them explains, for what they think is right.
At the film’s outset, Andy is showing signs of mission fatigue, not surprisingly for someone who’s had to die and come back to life more times than she can count. She isn’t given much chance to express her discontent, however, before the team is hit with the double whammy of a job gone horribly wrong, exposing them to discovery by unscrupulous corporate interests, and their sudden collective psychic awareness that a another of their kind has come into being. (Unlike the Highlander, it appears there can always be one more.) The new one turns out to be a young female U.S. marine named Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne, so luminous in If Beale Street Could Talk) who has no idea how she came back to life after being brutally killed while on duty in Afghanistan.
The Old Guard thus sets up a dual track narrative, between the team’s efforts to outmaneuver the enemy who’s threatening to seize and forcibly exploit them and their concurrent efforts to recruit Nile to their ranks. The result is what feels like two different movies. The first has most of the action and suspense; the second is much quieter and slower, but ultimately more compelling, playing to Prince-Bythewood’s strengths as an actor’s director who knows how to draw a natural, unforced intimacy and emotional charge from one-on-one scenes that could otherwise easily lapse into cliché.
Theron and Layne have a great master-pupil dynamic, and the latter effectively conveys the bewilderment and anguish of a young woman whose entire existence, beliefs, and support system are ripped away from her in a single moment. As her older, wiser, wearier mentors who wrestle constantly with the personal and psychological burdens brought on by their “gift,” Theron and Schoenaerts give just the thoughtful and nuanced performances you’d expect from actors of their caliber and experience. Kenzari and Marinelli aren’t given as much to do, but do make a devoted and absurdly cute couple who demonstrate a more positive and downright romantic attitude towards their fate.
As for the A-plot, it’s pretty by the numbers, turning on the greed of a cardboard cutout villain (Harry Melling) who brings to mind a British version of “Pharma-bro” Martin Shkreli. There’s also an ex-CIA operative named Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) whose main function for two-thirds of the movie is to look increasingly conflicted about his role in the standoff between Pharma-bro and the immortals. Ejiofor does his best, but can’t quite overcome the fact that the more that’s revealed about Copley, the less sense he makes as a character.
Despite these limitations, the face-offs between the protagonists and the bad guys move briskly and efficiently, and it’s always thrilling to watch Charlize Theron open up a can of whoop-ass. We also learn that the immortals aren’t truly immortal, adding an extra layer of uncertainty as the film moves through an unexpected (and frankly unconvincing) betrayal towards the expected final confrontation. While the outcome is never truly in doubt, its emotional cost shadows the team to the end and beyond.
The Old Guard is just good enough to make me wish it were better. It’s a bit overly solemn and downbeat – no quippy Marvel-style banter here – though not nearly as ponderous as some of the sloggier D.C. Comics entries. It suffers from the constraints of the superhero movie formula and the need to reduce the narrative of characters with such expansive histories to a single chapter. Indeed, the nature of the source material may have been better suited to a TV series or miniseries than a two-hour movie. But by the same token, the movie sets up the possibility of a sequel that feels organic and like something I’d actually be interested in watching. Like its heroes, The Old Guard may not be immortal, but it certainly has the potential for an extended lifespan. B