The Old Guard is Gina Prince-Bythewood’s first feature film since 2014’s underseen gem, Beyond the Lights. We definitely wanted to see what a director like Prince-Bythewood would bring to a pulpy comic book story like The Old Guard. Prince-Bythewood’s work, most notably Love & Basketball, typically resonates with viewers by digging deep into a story’s emotional core.
A squad of mercenaries called The Old Guard, led by the fearless and furious Andy (Charlize Theron), are the most dangerous mercenaries the world has ever known. These guys make Kill Bill’s Deadly Viper Assassination Squad look like the Teletubbies. Once you hire Andy and her crew, your target is as good as dead. But there’s a secret behind why this team of mercs excels at what they do – they’re almost immortal.
The Old Guard can’t die and they’re hundreds (if not thousands) of years old. They possess a supernatural ability to recover from any injury, even death. The crew have kept their secret safe for centuries by staying off the grid and living like ghosts. But times are changing, and in the information age, nobody can hide in plain sight.
Andy (Theron) has been doing this the longest. She wants out of the hero business, really, but she can’t escape. Andy’s world descends into chaos once she’s pulled into a job with teammates Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli).
The job, conveyed to them by a man named Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is to rescue a group of kidnapped girls in South Sudan. But there’s more to the job than meets the eye, as her team is confronted by the fact that there are people out there – namely Merrick (Harry Melling), the sketchy boss of a greedy pharmaceutical company – who knows about her and her team and wish them no good.
Life gets even more complicated when an American soldier named Nile (KiKi Layne) returns from the dead. Andy must evade capture while tracking down Nile and taking the fledgling immortal under her wing.
Andy and her crew have hundreds of years of battle experience, and it shows in the way they fight. They engage in combat as though they’re linked through a hive mind. Amidst the chaos, the team intuitively places themselves in perfect tactical positions without saying a word. They’re lightning quick, and operate with Terminator-like efficiency – they take down the opposition in as few moves as possible, cutting through swaths of henchmen faster than a German Shepherd would go through a handful of Snausages.
When talking about Hollywood’s biggest action stars, people often leave Charlize Theron out of the conversation. That’s a damn shame too, because she’s been kicking arses across the silver screen for almost two decades.
Ultimately, while the story in The Old Guard doesn’t feel wildly original, it’s definitely good enough to make you want a sequel. However, with a few more edgy action flicks like The Old Guard under her belt, Theron’s bad-ass body of work will elevate her into the same rarefied air as Hollywood’s biggest action stars.
