Before you read this review, watch the film! Spoilers abound. I’m giving it 5 out of 5 stars.
When I saw Netflix’s sleek, action-packed advertisement for The Old Guard on Twitter, I had high hopes despite their unreliable track record. After watching this 2.5 hour-long action-packed fantasy feature, I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed! In fact, The Old Guard is arguably the best Netflix original film I’ve ever watched- and then some.
Disclaimer: I have not read the comic yet, but I might have to pick it up after watching this!
The Old Guard is about a band of intrepid immortals who came together from across the ages and the world to weather the curse (and blessing) of immortality together. They travel the world doing good and saving lives, but they’ve fallen into a rhythm over the centuries, adapting varying ways of dealing with the lot they’ve been handed. At the start of the film, the world-weary Andromache of Sythia (aka Andy) leads a lovable crew of savvy warriors, Booker, Joe, and Nicky.
They have the incredible ability to regenerate from injuries and never fall ill, so it is of utmost importance that their existence remains virtually unknown to the world at large. It is the betrayal of a client, James Copely, and the “birth” of the first immortal in hundreds of years that sends their lives spiraling out of control as they scramble to locate this new immortal and silence Copely before he lets the cat out of the bag.
First, the themes.
The Downside of Immortality
The film opens with clinking bullet shells against cement and a voiceover from the film’s protagonist and resident immortal badass, Andy (played by Charlize Theron) who laments the inevitable repetition that comes with immortality. When a series of events repeats over and over again, it becomes harder and harder to see the divine or the spark that makes life worth living- like an inescapable Groundhog Day scenario. In this version of immortality, you don't die when you’re killed. You keep coming back until whatever force raised you decides that you've served your purpose. There’s heartlessness to it, brutality that is so numbing that it can dehumanize- but interestingly, the film doesn’t allow us to languish in this space for long.
Three cheers for the departure from grimdark!
Humanity and Love as a Grounding Force in the River of Eternity
Unlike Andy, Joe and Nicky have a very different approach to eternity. Being together and helping others has become their reason to exist. Despite the repetition and the bad things that happen, they are offered a sense of clarity about their place in the world and can seek comfort in the fact that they will continue to be together even as empires rise and fall to the ages. Because of this, they approach the world in a way that exists out of time.
Andy is snapped out of her funk when Nile, a young US Marine, becomes immortal after she is killed in action and just as Andy loses her ability to regenerate (which happens to all immortals eventually. The reasons for this are unknown to the audience). Nile is vivacious, empathetic, and quite obviously Andy’s heir apparent. She reminds her that that life is worth living because there is good left in the world worth fighting for (yes, that was a Lord of the Rings reference).
This immortal creating force wants them to find each other because it knows what an eternity alone can do to people (make them cold, unfeeling gods lording over a crumbling world), and it needs for them to remain human so that they can be empathetic to other human beings. This ensures that they'll have no qualms about carry out its ultimate goal of saving the human race in defiance of all socially and politically enforced will. To take this a step further, I believe that this supernatural force gives them immortality so that they can operate on the fringes making them immune to the influence of external forces.
She Moves in Mysterious Ways
What is this force that creates immortals, ensures that they find each other, and takes it away when it’s done? What is it that works through them to stop humanity from destroying itself? Here's the kicker- I think something other than fate is pulling the strings because it's far too cruel and ironic to have that much heart. This is speculation, of course.
There is a wonderful scene near the end of the film in which Copely explains how he tracked them down. He put together a stringboard of their documented appearances throughout history, drawing connections to the people they saved to their future relatives who would go on to prevent nuclear disaster, save the lives of others, make groundbreaking advances in the medical field- probably more. Copely was able to see the benefits of the Old Guard's actions throughout history through a wide lens, but Andy was so blinded by the present that she couldn't see all the good they had done in retrospect and how their actions saved the world. I'm reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis which I'm sure most of you have heard before that says, “isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?” It's certainly one of this film's central themes.
Big Evil Pharma
The Big (Evil) Pharma aspect comes in the form of Merrick Pharmaceuticals which is predictably the big bad of the film. They kidnap Joe, Nick, Booker, and Andy in the hope of keeping them under lock and key in perpetuity to 1.) use their genetic material to create a cure for old age, disease, and injury, 2.) keep them out of their competitor’s labs, 3.) profit. Forever. Where this would seem to benefit humankind at first, Merrick Pharma’s research would probably only be accessible to those wealthy enough to afford it.
The Butterfly Effect
On the other side, the Old Guard's presence ensures the continued existence of the human race as a whole through their acts of goodwill which resonate through time, but they would no longer be able to do so if they were sacrificed to achieve immortality for a select few.
The Road to Hell is Paved in Good Intentions
Booker was empathetic to Andy’s suffering and hoped that Merrick Pharma might be able to figure out a way transform them into mortals again. His and Andy’s pasts are steeped in guilt directly tied to their immortality and, like Andy, he’s tired of being hunted for it. His intentions were good because he wanted to help his friends, but he went about it the wrong way because he put them in danger of being stuck in a lab forever, preventing them from saving the world as they were meant to. Fortunately, the mysterious omnipotent force put Nile in the right place at the right time to save the day.
All of these themes blend and undulate, weaving in and out like a complex tapestry. I'm stoked that Netflix pulled out all of the stops to make it! Fortunately for us, the writers did a fantastic job of setting things up for a sequel.
Now, the Technical Stuff
This cast rocked.
Before watching this, I only knew Charlize Theron and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Copley) who both gave stunning performances (no surprises there), but Kiki Layne (Nile), Marwan Kenzari (Joe), Matthias Schoenaerts (Booker), and Luca Marinelli (Nicky) brought this film home for me. The moments of intimacy they created were convincing, touching, and complex. Their shared history hung between them during every interaction. Even though Nile was fresh blood, they welcomed her with open arms and I never for a moment questioned that they weren’t family.
The BIPOC representation was so nice to see- not only Nile, Joe, and Copely (as headlining main characters), but Nile's Marine squadron, too!
The LGBTQ representation was front and center, as well. Thank you, Nicky and Joe! Andy and Quynh (another immortal who met a fate more terrible than death for hundreds of years) had serious chemistry, too, but they didn’t say that they were together in the film. My headcanon is that they were girlfriends. Maybe we’ll figure it out when the sequel drops!
The combat in this film was tight, well-choreographed, and incorporated 30 different martial art styles with Danny Hernandez (fight coordinator) and Brycen Counts (stunt coordinator) at the helm.
The Old Guard was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, an American director and screenwriter known best for her work on Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees. This is her latest directorial work and a landmark film because it is the first comic book adaptation ever to be directed by a woman of color. And it's about time, too.
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