A covert team of immortal mercenaries are suddenly exposed and must now fight to keep their identity a secret just as an unexpected new member is discovered.
“The Old Guard” has all the elements required for a good action flick: a team of immortal mercenaries, a top-notch cast, and exotic locales. Unfortunately, director Gina Prince-Bythewood is more interested in flash over substance and foregoes any decent attempt at character development, opting instead for a dizzy array of gun battles and fight scenes. Even though “The Old Guard” wants to pride itself on its visual aesthetics, the truth here is that not one action scene is authentic, every single fight scene and shootout is conventional and unimaginative and I bet you could close your eyes during any action moment and would probably be able to guess exactly what’s transpiring onscreen. Such a waste of talent, both in front of and behind the camera.
Charlize Theron plays Andy, an immortal who doesn’t know how old she is but can remember fighting in the Crusades and every major battle since. She leads three other immortals she discovered over the centuries, Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), and together, they take on bad guys around the globe trying to make the world a better place. When they are hired by ex-CIA operative Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a man they’ve had dealings with in the past, to help rescue a group of young girls who have been taken hostage in Sudan, Andy is reluctant to take the mission as she has an uneasy feeling about it but Booker, Joe, and Nicky want to save the girls and Andy agrees to go with them. When they reach their destination, however, they find no girls but a group of armed men who shoot them dead. After a few moments, our heroes regenerate and take out the bad guys but after further inspection, Andy discovers hidden cameras in the room and surmises that they have been set up by Copley. They quickly leave and board a cargo train with the intent of heading back to their secret hideaway just outside of Paris.
At the same time in Afghanistan, a young marine, Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne) and her platoon are searching for a terrorist when he attacks her and slits her throat, killing her in the process. She is taken back to base where she is pronounced dead but shortly after, wakes up, much to everyone’s surprise with not a scratch on her body. While sleeping on the train, Andy, Booker, Joe, and Nicky all wake up after dreaming about Nile and Andy realizes she is a new immortal she must track down before the authorities do. Nile is informed that she is to be flown to Germany for further testing but Andy intervenes and takes her with her instead. Over the course of their trip back to Paris, Andy tells her that she is immortal and can regenerate from any type of wound and that she and her three friends are also immortal. Trying to get accustomed to her new normal, their location is attacked and Joe and Nicky are taken hostage while Andy, Booker, and Nile manage to evade capture.
They discover that Copley is behind the kidnapping and they track him down to his home in the English countryside but before they reach his house, Nile informs Andy she wants out, claiming she is not ready to live this sort of life and needs time to think. Andy understands and lets her go but when she and Booker reach the house, they are taken hostage and transported to a secret laboratory in London. Nile swallows her pride and returns to the house, regretting that she let Andy down but when she arrives, she meets Copley and he informs her of what happened and she quickly surmises he is not the bad guy after all. After his wife died from cancer a few years prior, he learned about the immortals and their power to regenerate and wanted to take a sample of their blood, hoping it could help future cancer patients but a pharmaceutical magnate named Merrick (Harry Melling), wants the immortals so he can study them in his lab and hope to make billions from his research on them. With all the immortals being held hostage, Nile suits up and has Copley take her to their location where she plans to take the whole place down.
“The Old Guard” has an interesting premise but fails to capitalize on it because of its mundane action and banal narrative. In one scene, Andy recalls another immortal named Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), a woman she met during the Crusades and who became best friends with over the centuries but who was found guilty of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. As a result, her body was placed in a steel coffin and dumped at sea. Over the years, Andy tried to locate her but with no luck. The flashback scenes of the two women in various battles throughout history would have made a far superior film than the one at hand. It brought back memories of Russell Mulcahy’s “Highlander,” starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery and what Mulcahy got right, was switching the timelines to show the movie’s protagonist, Connor MacLeod (Lambert), in present-day New York City and then in the past when he first realized he was immortal and could only die from decapitation. If “The Old Guard” had followed suit, starting in the present and then going back in time to show how it all began in detail, it would have been far more interesting. As it stands, we only get quick flashbacks and old photographs accompanied by an inordinate amount of unnecessary exposition. Naturally, with superhero films a dime a dozen, the filmmakers leave the ending wide open for a sequel, including the obligatory mid-credits scene. Sigh.
Available to stream on Netflix Friday, July 10th
