old guard movie review

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Just as Ryan Coogler crafted “ Black Panther ” as an entry in his own directorial universe, Gina Prince-Bythewood casts her Netflix superhero film, “The Old Guard” in her own stylistic image. The director of “Love and Basketball,” “ The Secret Life of Bees ,” and “ Beyond the Lights ” enjoys scenes where her characters get all up in their feelings, and she invites you to climb in there with them. These are some introspective characters, a by-product of their having lived for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Several times, the camera lingers on their faces as they contemplate, or remember, the sadness of losing someone. The film sits patiently with these moments, putting the same level of importance on the characters and their emotions as it does on the action. A scene of Andy ( Charlize Theron ) savoring a piece of baklava carries the same weight as a scene of her cleaving a foe with a gigantic battle ax.

Andy is the eldest member of an elite band of people who appear to be immortal. The opening scene features a flash-forward to their bullet-ridden bodies; a little later, we see them rising up fully healed after this slaughter, spitting out the bullets that have penetrated their faces as they mow down their opponents. This squad of four is about to be joined by a fifth member, Nile ( KiKi Layne ), a Marine stationed in Afghanistan whose slit throat suddenly heals itself. She is also plagued by nightmarish visions of other team members, a psychic link that, according to Booker ( Matthias Schoenaerts ), only shuts down once they have all met. Until Nile showed up, Booker was the Guard’s youngest member, joining in 1812.

Since “ Mad Max: Fury Road ” cemented Theron’s ability to weld her Oscar-winning acting skills onto the bodies of fierce warriors who kick ass, “The Old Guard” treats us to a great, plane-bound fight between Nile and Andy. The two showcase their battle credentials while Andy offers gruesome examples of Nile’s ability to heal. With Nile’s braided, natural hairdo and Andy’s Karen-style coif, their battle plays like an unintentional and vengeful commentary on those angry “can I speak to a manager” videos plaguing social media. What does feel intentional, however, is the inclusivity inherent in the depiction of the immortals, both in flashbacks and in its current timeline. They are played by a variety of different races and it never once feels forced or pandering.

In addition to observing the humanity of its heroes, “The Old Guard” also employs Prince-Bythewood’s penchant for grandiose, melodramatic gestures that shouldn’t work at all yet play out masterfully. Think about Noni on that balcony in “Beyond the Lights,” or Monica setting the terms of the climactic game in “Love and Basketball.” Here, the moment occurs between Andy’s teammates Nicolo ( Luca Marinelli ) and Joe ( Marwan Kenzari ). By virtue of their shared immortality, these men have been together for hundreds of years. They are lovers whose “Meet Cute” occurred when they were constantly killing each other during the Crusades. After they’ve been captured by minions of our villain, the evil pharmaceutical dudebro, Merrick ( Harry Melling ), Joe’s concern for his fallen comrade is mocked with homophobic intent. “Is he your boyfriend?” his captor asks. Joe’s response with a declaration of love as shamelessly florid as it is heartfelt, putting that paltry moment of LGBTQ representation in “ Avengers: Endgame ” to shame.

Writer Greg Rucka , who adapted the graphic novel he wrote with Leandro Fernandez , hits all the standard story beats of this genre. There’s the obvious exception to the immortality rule, an over-the top villain, the villain’s conflicted right hand man ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ), a very sad backstory of torment for Andy, a betrayal, a climactic rescue mission, and even a scene that sets up the sequel. But he and Prince-Bythewood always support these familiarities with their actors’ ability to depict how strongly bound together their characters are. There are numerous scenes where people just talk to each other, either to get exposition out of the way or to propel the story forward, and every time, we come away feeling as if we know these people. So when the torture-filled middle portion kicks in, there is genuine concern for our heroes. These scenes force us to question the terror of being condemned to a lifetime of gruesome medical experiments simply because you cannot shuffle off this mortal coil.

Though it contains more dramatic sequences than most superhero movies, “The Old Guard” doesn’t scrimp on the good, old-fashioned violence. Combat scenes are filmed so you can see who’s doing what, and edited together for maximum carnage and effect by Prince-Bythewood’s usual editor, Terilyn A. Shropshire . Shropshire is a favorite of directors like Kasi Lemmons and, as seen in her work in the first episode of Ava DuVernay's “ When They See Us ,” she’s very good at alternating between intimate drama and the much wider scope of action, keeping both speeds in balance. The cinematography by Barry Ackroyd and Tami Reiker is also quite good; their sequences at night and inside rooms have the same richness as their brightly lit outdoor shots of France and the desert.

"The Old Guard” has the benefit of not carrying the strict, fan-driven baggage of the Marvel and DC movies. As a result, it may not get the attention it deserves. But this is an excellent example of what this type of film can be, one I hope will be studied by the much bigger-budgeted tentpoles you know and love. I can’t remember the last time I was actually pumped to see a sequel based on a “post-credits” teaser—to be honest, I never know what the hell is going on in most of them—but this one made me wish Netflix had switched me immediately to the next installment as the credits rolled.

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The Old Guard (2020)

Rated R for sequences of graphic violence, and language.

118 minutes

Charlize Theron as Andromache of Scythia / Andy

KiKi Layne as Nile Freeman

Matthias Schoenaerts as Booker

Marwan Kenzari as Yusuf Al-Kaysani / Joe

Luca Marinelli as Nicky

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Copley

Harry Melling as Merrick

• Gina Prince-Bythewood

Writer (based on the graphic novel series by)

Writer (comic book co-creator).

• Leandro Fernandez

Cinematographer

• Barry Ackroyd
• Tami Reiker
• Terilyn A. Shropshire
• Volker Bertelmann
• Dustin O'Halloran

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‘The Old Guard’ Review: Fighting to the Death, and Beyond

Charlize Theron leads a group of immortal warriors in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s fresh take on the superhero genre.

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By A.O. Scott

“The Old Guard” could just as well have been called “The New Blood,” since that’s what it tries to pump into the weary superhero genre, with a reasonable degree of success and quite a lot of, well, blood. With the familiar movie-studio franchises in lockdown, Netflix has the opportunity to introduce a new squad of specially empowered warriors, drawn from the pages of Greg Rucka’s graphic novel series, brought to life by the director Gina Prince-Bythewood and set loose against an evil tech-bro big pharma C.E.O. and his heavily armed minions.

The fighters — led by the fearless, furious Andy (Charlize Theron) — don’t have fancy costumes or alter egos, and they all share the same superpower, which is not dying. Or not staying dead. When those minions hit them with automatic-rifle barrages, Andy and her colleagues fall down and bleed, but then they jump up again, wounds quickly fading, to finish off their surprised attackers.

Andy is the boss because she’s been doing this the longest — since antiquity, when she went by Andromache. The others include Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), lovers who met cute on opposite sides of the Crusades, and Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who joined up during the Napoleonic Wars. Much of “The Old Guard,” which gently clears a path for possible sequels, has to do with the initiation of the newest member of the team, a young United States Marine named Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne).

There have been a few others over the centuries. One thing Nile learns, as she struggles to understand her immortality, is that it comes with some fine print. Not a stake-through-the-heart vampire escape clause, but something more subtle and philosophical. Time comes for everyone, sooner or later, and Andy’s crew lives in the shadow of both perpetual loss — they are doomed to outlive anyone they might care about — and constant uncertainty. They are powerful, but also vulnerable.

Which is a good look nowadays. Nobody needs arrogant, swaggering heroes, and the tone of hard-boiled melancholy that Theron in particular sets is welcome. Like a gunslinger in a certain kind of western, Andy is having doubts about her vocation, wondering how much fight she has left in her and whether her efforts have been in vain. The world, she bitterly notes, hasn’t gotten much better, and it’s not always possible to tell the good guys and the bad guys apart.

She and the others see themselves as a kind of nongovernmental humanitarian intervention force, though what they mostly do is kill people. This contradiction bothers Nile, and represents an ethical circle that “The Old Guard” doesn’t quite square. It’s nice to hear about the helpful things these immortals have done, but what we really want to see them do is throw punches, swing axes, break bones and blow stuff up.

Prince-Bythewood obliges, keeping the action fast and fierce and avoiding C.G.I.-heavy, overdone set pieces. She is a filmmaker who never condescends to her material, but whatever the genre — romantic comedy ( “Love & Basketball” ), coming-of-age story ( “The Secret Life of Bees” ) or show-business melodrama ( “Beyond the Lights” ) — her movies are anchored in humane, shrewd curiosity about the people they depict.

In this case, the emotional axis is the uneasy mentor-protégé bond between Andy and Nile. Andy is wise, but also weary, in danger of losing the sense of purpose that has sustained her for who knows how many years. Nile, for her part, has been drafted into a cause she didn’t choose and doesn’t understand, and she wavers between self-confidence and panic. Layne, a standout in Barry Jenkins’s “If Beale Street Could Talk,” is a quiet, intense presence, with a knack for the kind of small gesture — an eye-roll here, a shrug or a grimace there — that Prince-Bythewood has a knack for noticing.

The story — Rucka wrote the script — doesn’t feel wildly original, but it’s good enough to activate a lively interest in the characters. An ex-C.I.A. guy, Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), recruits the team for a mission that turns out to be a trap. That pharma boss, Merrick (Harry Melling), whose hooded sport coats are perfect signifiers of 21st-century rich-guy awfulness, wants to harvest immortal DNA for new medicines. The do-gooder veneer he puts on his megalomania fools nobody, except maybe Copley. You do hope that the anonymous gunmen Merrick employs have decent health insurance.

And also that future installments will build on the promise of this beginning, which suggests all kinds of possible developments. There’s a lot of back story to cover, and also various future conflicts within the old guard and between them and the rest of the world. I’m not usually someone to hope for sequels, but I guess if you live long enough …

The Old Guard Rated R. Plenty of killing. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic for The Times. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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‘the old guard’: film review.

Charlize Theron leads a team of immortal mercenaries whose power is exposed to vulnerability in 'The Old Guard,' Gina Prince-Bythewood's action thriller for Netflix based on the graphic novel series.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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A persuasive argument, not that one should still be required, for handing women directors the reins more often on big-canvas action movies, The Old Guard represents a boldly assured step for Gina Prince-Bythewood away from the intimate romantic drama of strong previous work like Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights . That said, what makes this gripping graphic novel adaptation so distinctive is the trust it places in its audience to stay glued through the quiet, character-building interludes threaded among excitingly varied fight scenes that crescendo in an expertly choreographed showdown.

Led with take-charge authority by Charlize Theron , flanked by a breakout turn from KiKi Layne , this is unusually soulful superhero material firmly rooted in real-world situations. Actually, calling the Netflix feature a superhero film seems reductive given the melancholy ambivalence shown by its protagonists toward their powers. But it’s definitely superhero-adjacent, and a welcome surprise for those of us craving more emotional layering and dramatic grit and less routine comic-strip wham-kapow.

Release date: Jul 10, 2020

This is a mainstream movie that benefits enormously from its intelligence and inclusivity:  The Old Guard showcases commanding work from a woman of color in the director’s chair; a muscular co-lead role for a Black actress with intriguing elements put in place for her prominence in future installments (I’m so there); and most unexpectedly, a jolt of queer-positive representation via gay characters whose love is reaffirmed with stirring defiance in the face of macho scorn.

Adapting his series of graphic novels (illustrated by Leandro Fernandez), screenwriter Greg Rucka also adds texture through his sensitive observation of the lingering trauma of war, the weight of violence and the loss of family while grounding the story’s villainy in a portrait of 21st century capitalism that blurs the lines between greed and sadism. Making the heroes’ chief antagonist a maniacal misfit nerd who heads a Big Pharma corporation — played by Harry Melling, the Harry Potter franchise’s Dudley Dursley, all grown up — only adds to the heightened stakes of superpowers battling against the rampant ills of our contemporary world.

Theron plays Andromache of Scythia, who helpfully goes by Andy, head of a tight band of warriors unable to be killed, regenerating every time they die. Her fellow soldiers Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) met and fell in love while fighting on opposing sides in the Crusades, and logistics guy Booker ( Matthias Schoenaerts ) was first slaughtered in the Napoleonic Wars. Andy’s weapon of choice is a double-headed medieval ax — or a modern take on one — but she dates back even further, judging by the ancient Greek placement of her name.

The group has no catchy tag, like the Avengers, nor is their moral code initially clear. Asked if they’re good guys or bad, one of them replies, “Depends on the century.” Basically, they are deadly mercenaries, soldiers for hire brought in to sort out dire situations. But Andy is disillusioned by humanity’s failure to redeem itself even after centuries of their interventions. “The world can burn for all I care,” she says. “I’m done.” She’s like a weary vampire for whom eternal life is more of a curse than a blessing.

Andy reluctantly gets on board when they are recruited by former CIA agent Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to rescue 17 schoolchildren abducted in South Sudan, echoing the 2014 Boko Haram kidnappings in Nigeria. But that mission turns out to be a set-up, revealing that an enemy knows of their carefully concealed existence.

At the same time, they share visions of an “awakening,” the emergence for the first time in centuries of a new immortal, when U.S. Marine Nile Freeman (Layne) gets her throat slashed in Afghanistan and swiftly recovers. The visions are mutual; Nile’s nightmare flashes of Andy’s past illuminate a backstory that includes the death of the latter’s original comrade — the first indication that their immortality is not absolute — and the cruel fate met by her beloved companion Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo, seen recently as Hanoi Hannah in Spike Lee’s  Da 5 Bloods ).

Prince-Bythewood puts refreshing time and care into establishing the characters in an opening stretch that includes enough gun, fist, sword and mixed martial arts action to whet the appetite for the more extended clashes to come. This is especially true of the spiky interplay between Andy and Nile, as the eternal warrior whisks her newborn sister away from military scrutiny. Freaked out by what’s happening to her, Nile resists, notably in a pounding mano a mano fight with Andy in the cargo hold of an airborne plane.

Nile barely has time to accept her kinship before the group is ambushed at a safe house outside Paris and two members taken by a paramilitary squad working for Merrick (Melling), CEO of the pharmaceutical company that bears his name. Having made a fortune on cancer treatments, he is determined to find a drug to reverse cognitive decline, but his motives are not altruistic. His research lab evokes shades of Nazi human experimentation as the scientist on his payroll (Anamaria Marinca) draws blood and tissue samples from the abductees in order to replicate their DNA.

Merrick wants the rest of the group captured to keep them out of his competitors’ hands. But Andy, forever guilt-stricken over her failure to protect Quynh, vows to get her comrades back. Rucka’s script deftly introduces physical setbacks, internal betrayals, uncertainties about Nile’s commitment and a shift in one character’s loyalties as the rescuers gear up to take on Merrick’s heavily armed crew in an impressively sustained final act full of balletic fight moves.

Theron has accrued bona fide action credentials in films like Atomic Blonde and most memorably in Mad Max: Fury Road ; here she plays another kind of Furiosa, burdened by memories of countless tragedies stretching back across history. Dressed in basic black, with dark hair in a no-fuss, side-parted bob, she looks toned and powerful, moving with a loose swagger. But it’s the brooding interiority of the character, the psychological baggage she’s carrying, that gives her dimension. One of her best scenes is a tender exchange with a French pharmacist dressing her wounds, in which the stranger’s kindness cuts through Andy’s jaded disgust with humanity’s failings.

Layne, so luminous in Barry Jenkins’  If Beale Street Could Talk , toughens up convincingly, pushing back against the unasked-for mentorship of Andy with palpable anger while slowly coming to terms with the sorrow of losing her family and being conscripted into a life in the shadows. In a strong scene between Nile and Booker, we observe her mind ticking over the road ahead as he opens up about the pain of watching people he loves grow old and die while he never ages. Schoenaerts, a naturally physical actor with an introspective side, brings quiet depths to this role.

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All the characters are well-drawn, with Kenzari and Marinelli giving an affecting display of a love that has only grown stronger over the millennia. Unlike, say, the polite acknowledgment of Sulu’s sexuality in Star Trek Beyond , or the ambiguity in screen portrayals of queer characters from the comics in MCU movies, Prince-Bythewood and her actors treat the union of Joe and Nicky with unabashed candor.

Melling puts a suitably nasty spin on corporate villainy, playing Merrick with a rodent-like intensity and twisted sense of power in inverse proportion to his physical presence; and Ejiofor reveals gnawing conflicts in Copley, setting up an ongoing role if this film should generate a sequel. Pay attention to a brief coda six months after the main action for an explicit indication of how another character is likely to figure in an eventual follow-up.

There’s a pleasing sweep to the storytelling, which jumps across settings in Africa, Southern Asia, rural France and London. Prince-Blythewood has used TV experience on Cloak & Dagger and Shots Fired as a stepping stone to a more action-driven movie than her previous work. She has assets in the dynamic camerawork of Tami Reiker and Barry Ackroyd (the latter having shown his dexterity with the high-tension visuals of his collaborations with Paul Greengrass), and the punchy cutting of regular editor Terilyn A. Shropshire.

As always with Prince-Blythewood, the use of music provides sharp enhancement, with a subtle score by Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran that incorporates driving techno and percussion elements. There’s also an eclectic mix of vocals, encompassing ambient, electropop, rap, hip-hop and R&B, primarily in soft, slow cuts that combine to give the movie a spiritual, trance-like feel that deepens its thematic emphasis on the psychological toll of violence.

The Old Guard  feels like just the new crew we need.

Production companies: Skydance, Denver & Delilah Films, Marc Evans Production Distributor: Netflix Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Harry Melling, Van Veronica Ngo, Matthias Schoenaerts, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anamaria Marinca, Joey Ansah Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood Screenwriter: Greg Rucka, based on the graphic novel series by Rucka, illustrated by Leandro Fernández Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Charlize Theron, A.J. Dix, Beth Kono, Marc Evans Executive producers: Stan Wlodkowski, Greg Rucka Directors of photography: Tami Reiker, Barry Ackroyd Production designer: Paul Kirby Costume designer: Mary Vogt Music: Volker Bertelmann, Dustin O’Halloran Editor: Terilyn A. Shropshire Sound designers: Glenn Freemantle, Ben Barker Visual effects supervisor: Sara Bennett Casting: Lucy Bevan, Aisha Coley

Rated R, 118 minutes

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The Old Guard Reviews

As one of the creators of the original comics, Greg Rucka delivers a screenplay packed with intriguing lore, which is well-explored and well-established for (what should be) the first movie in a new franchise.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 24, 2023

Predictable and at times very, very boring, and the music makes it even more anti-climatic. I don't see a saving grace here. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Feb 1, 2023

On paper it looks like a carbon copy of Highlander but Theron... and a series of entertaining action set pieces that are directed with verve and style by director Gina Prince-Bythewood... prove you can teach The Old Guard new tricks.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2022

The themes and moral dilemmas presented are excessively contrite and manipulative while doing nothing to elevate the material from a below-average comic book picture.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 1, 2022

A new action-superhero mashup from Netflix that sounds a lot better than it ends up being.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2022

This epic about immortal soldiers on the lam gets extra points for innovation. Finally, a mainstream action movie features a gay couple as the romantic focal point.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 20, 2022

Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Old Guard is unlike any other movie based on a graphic novel. She gives us a steady stream of action and a storyline that never bores, and a welcome message about the power of goodness.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 11, 2022

The immortals have a powerful female energy driving them forward, which is refreshing to see in a mainstream action film.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2021

Ambition is not always the best idea in your story. At this point we must know that not everything has to be at the cost of the entire world in action films. Universe-building harmed the story. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 22, 2021

What saves The Old Guard from being just another cash grab is its dynamic fight scenes, coupled with the evaluation of both the delightful and destructive nature of time.

Full Review | Sep 14, 2021

If you like Highlander and 6 Underground, you're certainly in for a treat here, as Netflix's latest streaming blockbuster plays like a cross between the two.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2021

It's a slam-dunk of an action movie. The pace is brisk, the script is solid, the fight scenes brilliantly choreographed.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2021

Screenwriter Greg Rucka provides a well-conceived script, though a couple of characters make amazingly stupid choices...

Full Review | Jul 19, 2021

Watch the first 5 minutes of this new Netflix action movie starring Charlize Theron and you'll know literally everything that's going to happen.

Full Review | Jul 14, 2021

The Old Guard falls back on the familiar a bit too often, but the world it builds and its charismatic cast keep things interesting and offer plenty of potential, even if it doesn't spawn a franchise.

Full Review | Jul 13, 2021

Prince-Bythewood's direction is without reproach, as is the acting: The characters are nuanced and varied, the pacing balances fast and spectacular fight choreography with scenes that are almost meditative in their intimacy.

Delivered in between a series of flashy fight scenes - mostly played out to a lazy soundtrack of dance bangers - this punchy dialogue adds heft to the quieter moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 21, 2021

Great choreography and fight scenes make up for any of the flaws in the story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 10, 2021

The Old Guard ends with a post-credits scene setting up another entry. For the first time in a good while, that feels like a promise rather than a threat.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2021

A clever-enough twist on the superhero genre to add a little hefty freshness to the genre.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2021

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Old Guard

A covert team of immortal mercenaries is suddenly exposed and must now fight to keep their identity a secret just as an unexpected new member is discovered. A covert team of immortal mercenaries is suddenly exposed and must now fight to keep their identity a secret just as an unexpected new member is discovered. A covert team of immortal mercenaries is suddenly exposed and must now fight to keep their identity a secret just as an unexpected new member is discovered.

• Gina Prince-Bythewood
• Leandro Fernandez
• Charlize Theron
• Matthias Schoenaerts
• 1.8K User reviews
• 263 Critic reviews
• 70 Metascore
• 5 wins & 24 nominations

• (as Mette Towley)

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Did you know

• Trivia Greg Rucka wrote the first draft screenplay, but when Charlize Theron came aboard, she had a number of issues with it. These were raised in a conference call with Theron, which Rucka described as "one of the worst experiences of my career." He did another rewrite but was then fired. Theron's production company commissioned a new script from new writers but Netflix hated that version. When Gina Prince-Bythewood came on board, she recommissioned Rucka, who was able to patch up his differences with Theron.
• Goofs Marines do not have medics. When the female Marine character named Nile has her throat cut the other Marine calls for a Medic, repeatedly. Marines have Corpsmen. This is a biggie to Marines.

Soldier : What is he? Your boyfriend?

Joe : You're a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. He's not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me, even after a millennia. His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worth of. I love this man beyond measure and reason. He's not my boyfriend. He's all and he's more.

Nicky : You're an incurable romantic.

[Joe and Nicky kiss in front of the stunned guards]

• Crazy credits Close-ups of the items on the bulletin board with the evidence of the immortal people is seen in the background during the first part of the credits, followed by a scene of video evidence of one of the scenes in the movie being deleted.
• Connections Featured in Chris Stuckmann Movie Reviews: The Old Guard (2020)
• Soundtracks Born Alone, Die Alone Written by Madalen Duke (as Madalen Duke), Gabriela Olmedo Catalán and Adrianne Gonzalez Performed by Madalen Duke (as Madalen Duke) By arrangement with All Media Music Group, Inc.

User reviews 1.8K

• Jul 10, 2020
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• July 10, 2020 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• The Old Guard: Những Chiến Binh Bất Tử
• Marrakech, Morocco
• Skydance Media
• Denver and Delilah Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $70,000,000 (estimated)

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• Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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Charlize Theron is better than the standard action in Netflix's The Old Guard: Review

Some actors excel at playing ordinary; Charlize Theron has never really been one of them. Even in rare (and excellent) outliers like Tully or Young Adult , there's always the sense that she’s biding her time, waiting for the moment her character can break free from some sad basement suburbia and get back to the business of slaying or saving the day.

In other words, squaring up for exactly the kind of role she takes on in The Old Guard , a movie that finds Theron once again playing a life form vastly superior to humans. As Andromach the Scythian — you can call her Andy — she’s the leader of a band of immortal warriors that includes Matthias Schoenaerts and If Beale Street Could Talk ’s KiKi Layne.

And she’s great at it, unsurprisingly, even if her lonely enforcer is rarely as fierce as Mad Max: Fury Road ’s Furiosa nor as fun as Atomic Blonde ’s platinum assassin (though her hair, chopped into a glossy chocolate pageboy, does bring back memories of Aeon Flux's iconic bob .)

Maybe that’s because poor Andy has spent a thousand-plus years fighting for justice and freedom, and now her worst foe is a peevish pharma bro ( Harry Potter ’s Harry Melling ) intent on forcibly extracting the warriors' deathless DNA for his own nefarious ends. Or maybe it’s that she, and we, have seen so much of this before.

Some fans literally have, at least on the page: Greg Rucka’s script is based on his own cult graphic-novel series of the same name, and he handles the basic mythology breezily enough in a few brief expository flashbacks that show how the crew came to be over millennia (a Crusades battle here, a little Napoleonic warfare there).

Layne's Nile is the new kid, a nervy young Marine who wakes up in an Afghan field hospital to find a fatal injury mysteriously healed; one moment it's a gaping flesh wound, the next it's disappearing like a time-lapsed kitten scratch. That makes her a convenient proxy for the audience, though the story doesn’t leave a lot of room to mourn the life she’s forced to leave behind.

Or to bring much nuance to the much-heralded queer romance between Guards Joe and Nicky (Marwan Kanzari and Luca Marinelli); mostly it just marks the spot — a happy flag planted for LGBTQ representation — and moves on. (Chiwetel Ejiofor, as the government agent in hot pursuit, also lingers at the edges, underused).

Which seems like even more of a shame considering the kind of intimate storytelling director Gina Prince-Bythewood hails from; her sensitive handling of romantic dramas like Beyond the Lights and Love & Basketball would seem to serve those areas of the film far better than it does its bloody but mostly quotidian fight scenes.

That leaves a movie that, beneath its strong female presence and few contemporary bits of flair, has a sort of inevitable bog-standard action feel, just entertaining enough in its live-die-repeat machinations to pass the engagement test.

But as the plot gallops toward its climactic showdown, it's hard not to wish for more of nearly everything but bullets: more banter, more backstory, more scale and visual wit. And more, too, of the fellow warrior (Van Veronica Ngo) who may have been Andy's only equal before cruel fate (or just a mean screenplay) stole her away.

If The Old Guard doesn't bring many new tricks, it does have what seems like a pretty sweet deal with Netflix; the final scene slyly opens the door to a sequel, and an opportunity mere mortals are rarely granted in the real world: the chance to rip it all up and start again. B-

The Old Guard begins streaming on Netflix July 10.

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Charlize Theron in ‘The Old Guard’ on Netflix: Film Review

In a watchable franchise wannabe, Charlize Theron leads a team of immortals who are also B-movie renegades.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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There’s a thing you can always count on in blockbuster movie culture: If a popcorn genre hangs around long enough, after a while it’s going to merge with another popcorn genre it seemingly has nothing to do with. That’s what happened when “Kingsman: Secret Service” (2014) fused the setting and attitude of a James Bond thriller with the fanciful bang-bang-ballet-in-the-air action of a superhero movie.

It happens again in “ The Old Guard .” Adapted from the 2017 graphic novel by Greg Rucka (who wrote the screenplay), the movie is about a team of crime-fighting immortals whose flesh can repair itself from bullet wounds and knife stabs like something out of an “X-Men” film. But they’re also a down-and-dirty crew of leather-jacketed renegades who find a way to do maximum damage with machine guns and windpipe-smashing moves like something out of a Jason Statham payback special. You could call them The I-Team (I for “immortal”). You could also call the film “X-Men: The Expendables Edition.”

The leader of this posse of ageless commandos is Andromache of Scythia, known as Andy ( Charlize Theron ), who we meet in Morocco, where she’s wearing Ray-Bans and a black T-shirt and a sharply edged dark-brown version of a late-’70s David Bowie coif. She looks like a refugee from a motorcycle commercial, which makes you think the film is going to be some convoluted exercise in numbingly abstract action iconography. But “The Old Guard,” if anything, goes in the opposite direction; it’s like an immortal-mercenary hangout movie. Chunks of the picture are logy and formulaic (it dawdles on for two hours), but the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood (making a major lane change after “Love & Basketball” and “The Secret Life of Bees”), stages the fight scenes with ripe executionary finesse, and she teases out a certain soulful quality in her cast.

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According to the film’s theology of invincibility, each team member was killed at a certain moment in history, only to wake up and learn that from that point on they would be immortal. Andy is the oldest — she can’t even remember how long she’s been at this — and Theron, as cuttingly fierce as you want her to be (especially when she’s wielding a circular medieval Asian slicing weapon), acts like someone who’s bone-tired after a millennia or two of fighting evil; the dream of immortality has become her cross to bear. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Booker, who was killed fighting for Napoleon, as a melancholy loner spinning through history. And Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli are Joe and Nicky, a swarthy duo who died while dueling in the Crusades and have been lovers through the centuries. That’s part of the film’s rousingly inclusive approach to the action genre.

The other part is the casting of KiKi Layne as Nile, a Marine who gets her throat slashed by a Taliban leader during the war in Afghanistan. One day later, she’s all better, marking her as the first new member of the I-Team since 1812. Layne’s performance is the most resonant in the film. She plays Nile as a surly, desperate, human-sized outsider who’s distinctly unenthused about joining her new warrior colleagues in a life that never ends. She’s so not with the program, and that gives the moment she agrees to get with it a charge of actual drama.

“The Old Guard” is at once a conventional action thriller; an origin story that’s trying, in its utilitarian Netflix way, to launch a badass franchise; and an “elegiac” late episode of that same franchise. It’s a genre movie that, if anything, takes its characters a lot more seriously than the audience does. Floating through the years with hidden identities, Andy and her team are presented to us as stealth saviors who really, really care. Andy, explaining the game of immortality to Nile, says things like, “It’s not what time steals. It’s what it leaves behind.” (A line like that can leave the pulse of a movie behind.)

The way “The Old Guard” works, immortality lasts until it doesn’t. The film has a passing-the-baton-to-a-representative-of-the-new-world plot that echoes “Terminator: Dark Fate” and “Logan.” The villain, Merrick, runs a pharmaceutical corporation and is played by Harry Melling (from the “Harry Potter” films) as if he were the evil grandson of Malcolm McLaren. His plan is to kidnap our heroes and learn the secrets of immortality by mining their flesh for its genetic secrets. Merrick’s middleman, Copley, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor , an actor who never fails to surprise. Here, he goes from villain to soul-haunted collaborator to the film’s equivalent of a certain character with an eyepatch in a way that’s entirely convincing, even as he barely moves a facial muscle. Will “The Old Guard” be successful enough to spawn a sequel? If it is, the challenge going forward will be to make the prospect of immortality seem like something more than a rerun.

Reviewed online, July 2, 2020. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 125 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Skydance, Denver + Delilah Productions production. Producers: AJ Dix, David Ellison, Marc Evans, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Beth Kono, Charlize Theron. Executive producers: Stan Wlodkowski, Greg Rucka.
• Crew: Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood. Screenplay: Greg Rucka. Camera: Barry Ackroyd, Tami Reiker. Editor: Terilyn A. Shropshire. Music: Volker Bertelmann, Dustin O’Halloran.
• With: Charlize Theron, Chiwetel Ejiofor, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Harry Melling.

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‘The Old Guard’ Review: Charlize Theron Kickstarts a New Action Franchise

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Former atomic blonde Charlize Theron goes nuclear brunette to play Andromache the Scythian (call her Andy for short), a centuries-old warrior who’s getting weary of fighting the good fight into the violent present. As per screenwriter Greg Rucka’s graphic novel, Andy leads a tight group of dedicated immortal mercenaries that include Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), a member since 1817, and Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), a gay couple who’ve been head over heels in love since the Crusades. Though the quartet can recover from wounds in minutes, pain is a constant. Meanwhile, U.S. Marine Nile Freeman (Kiki Layne) freaks out when she dies in combat … and immediately rises up to kill the dude who just cut her throat. Nile has no idea why she’s still among the living. Andy, however, recognizes a fellow quick-healing fighter when she sees one. And she’s quick to recruit the young soldier for the team.

That’s a lot of exposition to lay on upfront. But The Old Guard is that kind of action movie — it wants to spawn a franchise so badly you can smell the desperation. There’s no telling yet whether the movie has the juice for sequels, but for now at least this equivalent of a summer blockbuster fills the pandemic bill for escapism with a little something extra. (It begins streaming on Netflix starting July 10th.)

Chief among the movie’s assets is director Gina Prince-Bythewood, best known for Love and Basketball, the 2000 hit based on her own adolescent hoop dreams and one of the most successful films ever directed by a black woman. She also showed her skill with intimate drama in The Secret Life of Bees and Beyond the Lights, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a singer fighting the sexualization that comes with pop stardom. Still, nothing in those films prepares you for the ferocity she brings to The Old Guard. And if you’re thinking Prince-Bythewood sacrifices her gift for characterization to do it, think again. For all the sound and fury on screen, it’s the personal interactions that keep you emotionally in the game.

Theron has already showed her talent for bringing a deeper dimension to action as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Here, the actor reveals the toll that living forever is taking on Andy, who took a year off to heal emotional scars before her reluctant return to battle. It’s Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a former CIA agent, who alerts Andy to the 17 schoolchildren who’ve been abducted in South Sudan. However, the rescue mission is actually a trap set up by Merrick, a Big Pharma CEO hammed up to the hilt by Harry Melling, the famously spoiled Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter movies. He has obtained camera footage of the Old Guard defying death. Now the corporate 1-percenter is determined to carve up the team for blood, bone and tissue so he can sell their DNA for quick profits.

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Even when the fighting scenes grow repetitive — how many times can you watch Andy throwing her axe? — the characters themselves grow in force. Andy and Nile start out with an admittedly dynamite battle royale in the hold of a cargo plane; soon the veteran warrior is mothering her new charge. It’s satisfying on many levels to watch Layne, a young African-American newcomer, gives as good as she gets, and the actor, so luminous in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, rises beautifully to the challenge. You can feel Nile’s agony over leaving her family behind. It’s a sorrow she shares with Booker, a complex outlier who the excellent Schoenaerts plays with the banked resentment of someone used to watching those he’s loved grow old and die.

Such depth of field is rare in an epic of weapons and  warfare. Thank Prince-Bythewood for also taking the time to develop a queer love story in these frenzied circumstances. Kenzari and Marinelli turn Joe and Nicky into a romance that truly does stand the test of time. “His kiss still thrills me,” says Joe, “even after a millenium.” Even Andy is haunted by a lost love, Quynh (Veronica Ngo of Da 5 Bloods ), seen in Nile’s nightmares locked in a cage underwater, and a growing premonition that her immortality is not forever.

It’s possible that fans of all-adrenaline, all-the-time action movies will be turned off by the way Prince-Bythewood suffuses her film with melancholy, reflected in the cinematography of Tami Reiker and Barry Ackroyd, and musical references that move from explosive percussion to the introspective beauty of Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed.” The grace notes dissipate in a climax that’s more about sequel building than character construction. But until then The Old Guard finds unexpected power in the quiet at the heart of the storm.

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Review: ‘The Old Guard,’ starring Charlize Theron, breathes fresh life into superhero cinema

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Buried deep in “The Old Guard,” Gina Prince-Bythewood’s swift, somber action-thriller, is an image to file under my worst nightmares and probably yours too: A captive named Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo) is locked inside a giant suit of armor, weighed down with chains and thrown into the ocean. It would be an unspeakably awful fate for anyone, but it’s even more so for Quynh, whose body miraculously self-regenerates after every scrape, every wound and, yes, every death. Trapped on the ocean floor for decades that become centuries, she drowns, revives, drowns again and revives again, her water-clogged screams a terrifying reminder that there are punishments infinitely worse than death.

That’s one of many hard truths that linger amid the whizzing bullets and slashing blades of “The Old Guard,” a pleasurably human-scaled movie about what it means to be superhuman. Does your heart sink at the last part of that description — or at the fact that this Netflix release was adapted from a series of graphic novels? I sympathize, but rest assured: While the comic-book-inspired superhero saga may be Hollywood’s most exhausted subgenre, mindless repetition is the last thing on Prince-Bythewood’s mind. Always good at infusing traditional material with emotional conviction and sly political purpose ( “Love & Basketball,” “Beyond the Lights” ), she here turns the very notion of overkill sneakily on its head.

The protagonist here isn’t Quynh but another powerful, deathless fighter named Andromache the Scythian, which must be fun to sign in autographs — or it would be if Andy, as she sensibly calls herself, weren’t so intent on staying incognito. Superbly played by Charlize Theron with the same regal ferocity she brought to “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Atomic Blonde,” Andy is essentially the world’s oldest person: We see her in brief flashbacks to distant centuries, rocking a jeweled headdress and a heavy Boudicca vibe. These days, though, she favors a short black bob of hair and a wardrobe to match, the better to slip undetected through the shadows of history.

Andy leads a small, tough and very handsome team of fellow immortals who have intervened with quietly deadly force in some of humanity’s most momentous skirmishes. It took them a long time to find each other. Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) served alongside Napoleon back in 1812. Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and Joe (Marwan Kenzari) once fought each other in the Crusades but have since become lovers. They haven’t shaken off all their ancient habits — swords remain among their weapons of choice — but they are ruthlessly efficient fighting machines, ready to kill and die and kill and die ad nauseam.

Turnover is low but not unheard-of, and fresh recruits don’t come along too often. But psychic visions have alerted Andy and her colleagues to a promising candidate named Nile (KiKi Layne, “If Beale Street Could Talk” ), a tough young U.S. Marine stationed in Afghanistan. Not long after recovering from what should have been a fatal injury, Nile learns that the life she once knew is over and that she is now the newest member of Andy’s posse. She is cast, in other words, in a familiar enough movie role: the wary outsider through whose eyes we will discover the mysterious workings of an exclusive subculture.

Nile is a fast learner, as Layne’s sharp-eyed performance makes clear. And what she learns, mainly, is that immortality can be a real drag. It isn’t easy for a movie to suggest that this particular gift might be more curse than blessing, or that those who possess it might be uniquely valuable, and thus vulnerable, to their most powerful enemies. But “The Old Guard,” adapted by Greg Rucka from his and Leandro Fernández’s comic-book series, teases out these philosophical quandaries with wry wit, gallows humor and an often grisly sense of the absurd.

It also allows for some fascinating corporeal spectacle, as Prince-Bythewood lingers, with real tenderness and grim fascination, on the wondrous sight of burn scars gradually vanishing and bullet wounds healing themselves. But she and her grunting, grimacing actors also direct our attention to the characters’ more lasting psychological scars. You feel the accumulated trauma of their every wound, every death, every resurrection. You also feel the weight of their solitude: To avoid capture, Andy and her friends must spend most of their long lives in isolation, joining forces only once every few years to do battle with the forces of evil.

Their latest mission places them in contact with a past associate (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who may not have their best interests at heart. An insufferably smug pharmaceuticals CEO (Harry Melling) definitely doesn’t; he wants to harness their powers and invent a kind of invincibility-conferring super-drug. Twists and betrayals pile up, along with abductions, rescues and vertiginous set pieces. But while Prince-Bythewood keeps the story moving and orchestrates some excitingly dynamic action (nimbly shot by Tami Reiker and Barry Ackroyd), it’s clear that her fascination with this story is less visceral than existential.

As a tale of immortality and its discontents, “The Old Guard” has obvious points of connection with the vast canon of vampire lore and literature. Andy and Nile, with their moving if initially combative teacher-student rapport, might remind you a little of Anne Rice’s Lestat and Louis. Nicky and Joe’s romantic ardor, undimmed by the passage of time, brings back warm memories of Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive.” (That movie ended in Morocco, which is where this one begins.) At the same time, the relaxed banter and non-nuclear family dynamics evoke any number of blockbuster reference points, from the “Fast and Furious” movies to the extended Marvel and DC Comics fraternities. Perhaps the most obvious genre antecedent here is “X-Men’s” Wolverine, another hero cursed with self-healing properties.

“Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting,” Booker says, a line that the soft-eyed Schoenaerts nearly rescues from banality. “The Old Guard,” though a good deal more interesting than some of the movies to which it will be compared, doesn’t entirely sidestep their weaknesses, among them on-the-nose dialogue, fuzzy backstory and a conveniently selective regard for human life. For all its thoughtfulness about the peculiar metaphysics of life and death, this is still a movie in which the heroes wind up killing an awful lot of anonymous henchmen — and unlike them, those henchmen stay dead.

There’s nothing particularly objectionable about this dynamic, which mirrors that of countless action movies in which the baddies are expendable and the good guys are for all intents and purposes invincible. We accept it for the same reason we accept a lot of these movies, because the characters are vaguely coded as a force for good in the world. It’s easy enough to believe that about Andy and her friends — the actors’ charm goes a long way — but you can’t help longing for a deeper understanding of who they are, the causes they’ve fought for, the regimes they’ve aided and resisted. I mean that as both criticism and compliment. It’s the rare superhero movie in 2020 that can leave you wanting to see more, closing-credits kicker and all.

‘The Old Guard’

Rated: R, for sequences of graphic violence, and language Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes Playing: Available July 10 on Netflix

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'The Old Guard' Is A Smart Blend Of Action And Emotion

Linda Holmes

KiKi Layne, Luca Marinelli, Charlie Theron, and Marwan Kenzari are part of The Old Guard in Netflix's film of the same name. Netflix hide caption

KiKi Layne, Luca Marinelli, Charlie Theron, and Marwan Kenzari are part of The Old Guard in Netflix's film of the same name.

There's a moment in the wonderful 2000 romance Love And Basketball when Monica and Quincy, college sweethearts who are both athletes, sit on a dorm-room bed together, recovering from their bruises. Their bodies are tangled and facing in opposite directions, with her hand holding ice on his belly and his holding ice on her ankle. The camera looks at the little drops of water on his skin and on hers, and we hear the crinkle of her bag of ice as she gently wiggles it back and forth. It's an extraordinary moment of intimacy, both because of the way it communicates the foundations of the relationship — its nurture and trust — and because of the way it displays the inherent vulnerability of bodies and what a critical part of humanity they represent.

Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote and directed that scene, and in the last 20 years she's directed television like Shots Fired and other films like Beyond The Lights . But this was the scene I kept coming back to while watching the very good Netflix action thriller The Old Guard , starring Charlize Theron, which Prince-Bythewood directed from a script by Greg Rucka, adapting the comics he created with artist Leandro Fernandez.

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It might not be obvious, the connection between young lovers sprawled on a bed and a team of fighters against injustice. And particularly in this case, injured athletes aren't an obvious analogue because — and this is where I acknowledge that I am going to spoil the premise of the comics and the film — these are people who have lived many lifetimes, who cannot die. Or, rather, they die and they come back. Not just once, but over and over. For centuries; for longer.

Here's a quandary: How do you make a compelling movie — one with a good measure of fairly graphic violence, by the way — about a group of heroes who can't be killed? Don't they always have the upper hand? Won't they always win? There are clever ways that the story itself gets around this problem, but it's also absolutely critical that it's in the hands of a director who understands, and can convey on film, that link between physical vulnerability and humanity. Because one of the things this story is about is that even if you do not die, the pain of cycling through injury after injury, recovery after recovery, reconstitution after reconstitution of your being, is a hard way to exist.

It's a story that's partly about the attrition of your spirit that can come from being, very literally, a "survivor." And particularly because new recruit Nile (KiKi Layne, whom you know from If Beale Street Could Talk ) is a black woman and two of her teammates are men who fell in love after being on opposite sides of The Crusades (which is a witty idea, let's be honest), there is additional subtext here about the churn of violence and the costs of enduring it. Moreover, in a world seized with emergencies that activists are scrambling to address, it is frustrating enough when you feel like years have passed and all the attempts you have made to improve the world have come to nothing. What would it be like to feel that for centuries? For longer? Would you really want the long view? How much perspective could you stand to have about humanity?

More immediately, the plot is this: Andy (Theron) has been doing this the longest. She wants out of the hero business, really, but she can't escape. 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. How can they say no? When it turns out there's more to the job than meets the eye, she's confronted by the fact that there are people out there who know about her and her team and wish them no good.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Nile is a young soldier consumed with the wars of the present, and shortly after she discovers that something is very unusual about her response to injury, she winds up in the company of the Old Guard. (They don't go around calling themselves that, by the way; it would be very corny. And they don't do it.)

Seeking Empathy, 'Shots Fired' Creators Flip The Script On Police Shootings

This is the first film I've seen in quarantine that felt to me like a proper big summer movie — and yet it transcends so much of what's sometimes been disappointing about that category. Yes, it's a comic book movie. Yes, it's an action movie. Yes, it's about a team of good-doers. And it's exciting and satisfying and tense and all those things. But everything from its queer couple to its leading women to its director to its thoughtfulness to its point of view about violence makes it such a welcome addition. So often, films accept the idea that slaughter — when a character believes it's righteous — comes easily and seems normal once the action realm has been entered. Here, no: Here, Nile is horrified by a sequence that would be just another set piece in so many movies. She's not excited the way Spider-Man is excited about joining the Avengers. She's coming to terms with a future she never asked for, and with the implications it has for the life she had before all this started.

There were moments in The Old Guard when I literally just muttered, "Gina Prince-Bythewood, man." Seriously. Because I have admired the way she shoots bodies in love scenes for ages; the way she makes skin seem warm and eyes seem lit from the inside. When I saw Beyond The Lights , I wrote that she had "an uncommonly fine touch when shooting not just sex but other scenes of physical contact and closeness, which give the film a sense of intimacy and gravity." As it turns out, that skill translates brilliantly to action, and the logic that someone who can shoot sex well can shoot action well should probably be followed more often. There's a moment when Nile is isolated, breathing deeply and listening to Frank Ocean in her earbuds, that reminded me keenly of Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond The Lights , not just because they're both black women being filmed and seen in a tactile and radiant way black women often aren't in popular American film, but because the same director brings the same sense of vulnerable but durable physicality to both portrayals.

Not to be lost in this is how strong some of these performances are. This is a terrific deployment of the talents of Charlize Theron, sleek and knowing and fully in charge, swinging an axe and shooting a gun in a way that will satisfy anybody who secretly enjoys, just a little, those, "oooooh, yuck " moments in films like John Wick . (This is a pretty bloody movie. Please know that going in.) Layne is in a very different gear from the serene presence she was in Beale Street , but she's very good in this role that balances what we might call bad-assery with conscience and internal conflicts. Theron and Layne are also both funny together in the welcome moments of push and pull that are common to every story of the grizzled old veteran and the new recruit.

If you've got a big TV (or even a little one), there's plenty to watch; you know that. I know that. But if you miss the blockbuster and the star vehicle and the big action sequence, and if you want something that can be all those things while still having humanity and thought and a point of view, this is your film. And it comes from one of our great directors, who's been showing us for ages the cycle of injury and recovery, and who knows it will probably always be with us.

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Netflix’s The Old Guard Is Breathtaking

There’s always something exciting (and more than a little nerve-racking) about a director with a distinctive voice taking on a new film genre. Think Robert Altman doing noir with The Long Goodbye , or Terrence Malick making a war movie with The Thin Red Line . Or, more recently, Taika Waititi tackling a superhero flick with Thor: Ragnarok . So while Gina Prince-Bythewood, previously best known for the sublimely romantic Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights , might not seem like the first choice for a comic-book movie about a group of immortal superheroes who’ve been fighting evil for centuries, just a few minutes into The Old Guard you realize what an inspired choice she turns out to be.

And the scene that initially does it — I am not making this up — involves Charlize Theron guessing the provenance of a mysterious piece of baklava. Her character, Andy, once better known as Andromache of Scythia, has been around for about 6,000 years, having fought (and died, and come back) in hundreds and probably thousands of battles all over the world. Along the way, she has been worshipped as a god, burned as a witch, and hung out with Auguste Rodin. But right now, she sits with her small team of fellow ancient warriors (the other three have been around for merely hundreds of years) and plays a parlor game: They give her a piece of baklava; she has to use her eternity of experience to figure out where it’s from. It’s the kind of scene that would be an offhand moment in any other film or played for laughs. (Think the Avengers and their shawarma.) As directed by Prince-Bythewood, however, it’s warm, observant, quiet — and hence immersive. For a minute or so, nothing else matters in the world other than Charlize Theron and that piece of baklava.

Adapted by Greg Rucka, who created the original 2017 comic along with illustrator Leandro Fernández, The Old Guard is filled with such human moments, both frivolous and profound — quiet reveries, declarations of love, dreams about eternity, regrets over families and loves left behind and lost forever — and in the balance of the film, they hold equal weight with the action scenes, because ultimately everything feels connected.

Everybody feels connected too. Unlike the standard superhero team, the Old Guard themselves seem less like a collection of traits and more like real people. There’s a shared despair, largely unspoken, between Theron’s Andy and Matthias Schoenaerts’s Booker, a former Napoleonic army officer: Andy has seen so much loss in her many millennia, while Booker, relatively new to the immortality thing, is still working out his grief; somehow her numbness and his rawness land them both in the same uncomfortable place of wanting out of this life. Meanwhile, Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicolo (Luca Marinelli) are former combatants from the Crusades who are now lovers as well as brothers-in-arms, two men whose passion is fueled partly by the fact that, before they fell for each other, they killed each other over and over again. What an interesting idea that is! And how refreshing that the movie knows it and leans into it. All these characters really do feel as if they’ve known one another for centuries, with all the complexity — the bitterness and sacrifice and loyalty — that suggests. Into this team comes Nile (KiKi Layne), a young Marine who discovers her own immortality in Afghanistan and whose response to her strange new power is, at least at first, a combination of loneliness, confusion, and shame.

When I profiled Prince-Bythewood recently , it became clear that the quality of being present in a scene lies at the heart of all her work. What makes Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights so special isn’t just their romanticism but their patience. The director’s camera diligently observes her characters without rushing them along to the next big narrative or emotional climax. That kind of intimacy obviously comes in handy when you’re telling a love story, but when it’s transferred to the realm of comic books and superheroes, a different kind of alchemy occurs: A supernatural action fantasy starts to feel heartbreakingly real. So even though the plot of The Old Guard isn’t particularly novel — a sociopathic young pharma bro (Harry Melling) with a small private army attempts to harvest our heroes’ powers — we find ourselves deeply invested in their predicament, however by-the-numbers it may look on paper.

That’s not to suggest that The Old Guard doesn’t also kick all sorts of ass in the ways it’s supposed to. The combat has been creatively choreographed, and these men and women really do fight with the kind of speed, fluidity, and inventiveness you might expect from people who’ve been doing so for a long, long time, using cool weapons and cool martial-arts moves you shouldn’t try at home but will probably want to. That the film never has to rely on choppy editing to cover up for bad action is an additional blessing. (It helps, of course, to have Theron, who has already proved herself an elegant cinematic bruiser with roles in Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde .) For all the film’s brooding, it goes down easy. It’s enormously fun, but it won’t give you the kind of candy headache so many other superhero movies do nowadays.

Speaking of which: In ordinary times, The Old Guard (which is produced by Netflix, though a theatrical release was always planned) would have opened in a crowded marketplace that had already seen titles like Wonder Woman 1984 , Black Widow , a ninth Fast & Furious entry (also co-starring Theron), and The New Mutants . There are still plenty of pictures coming out, but since those big comic-book and comic-book-adjacent films have moved off the release schedule , The Old Guard now has an important corner of the market all to itself. Watching it, I don’t miss those other movies with their shared universes and painstakingly built, vigilantly managed worlds. I watch The Old Guard and try to imagine a new world, one where other comic-book movies are this well made and breathtaking.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Old Guard

• Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Charlize Theron as Andy; KiKi Layne as Nile; Matthias Schoenaerts as Booker; Marwan Kenzari as Joe; Luca Marinelli as Nicky; Chiwetel Ejiofor as Copley; Harry Melling as Merrick

Home Release Date

• July 10, 2020
• Gina Prince-Bythewood

Distributor

Movie review.

They’re the best at what they do, Andy’s little band. And they’ll do whatever is asked of them—if the cause, and the price, is right. They slide into a country like a blade of smoke. They rescue who they can, kill who they must, and poof , they’re gone.

They see themselves as the good guys. “We fight for what we think is right,” says Nicky, one of the group’s members. But lately, team leader Andy wonders whether they’re doing any good at all. For all their efforts, the world’s getting worse, not better. And Andy’s had enough.

“The world can burn, for all I care,” she says.

But if the world did burn, these four teammates— spoiler alert —might be the only people left standing.

Yes, Andy’s team is indeed the best at what they do. They’re quick, strong and lethal. Also, immortal. That helps in their line of work.

Oh, they’ll die eventually . Every living thing does, they’ll point out. But until their time comes, their bodies spit out bullets, patch up stab wounds and stitch together broken bones quicker than Starbucks brews your latte. Any number of people would kill to get their hands on their secret … if anyone knew about it.

But now, it seems as though someone does know. After Andy’s team is brutally ambushed in the South Sudan—with the whole attack recorded on video—Andy knows their secret is out. No longer are they the hunters: Now someone’s hunting them .

And that’s not all. Just as Andy and her team realize (through a subconscious dream connection) that they’re in someone’s crosshairs, they learn there’s another immortal out there—one who just discovered it herself. In her dreams, Andy sees the woman clearly: a soldier serving in Afghanistan.

She’s the first immortal to appear in, what, 200 years?

“Not another one,” Andy huffs. “Not now.”

But she has no choice but to deal with it. While Andy directs the rest of her team to find their pursuers, she goes after the new immortal herself. The woman’s going to want answers, after all. She’s confused, maybe scared. And given how people often react to folks who rise from the dead ( Zombie! Vampire! ), she might be in a little danger herself. (As much as an immortal person can be, at least.)

Plus, given the unknown threat that faces her team, another trigger finger couldn’t hurt.

Positive Elements

You get jaded after a few hundred years of battling baddies. Andy and her team may fight for what they believe is right, but several centuries of seeing humankind’s worst sides can make even the best of them question their priorities.

But Nile—the new girl—is free from centuries of world-weary cynicism. She’s still shaken by the fact that she killed a man—even though the same man “killed” her. She protects and sacrifices for her fellow teammates. She longs to talk with her family again, and she praises how her mother raised her.

“She fought for us,” Nile tells Andy of her mother. “Never backed down. Never let us back down, either.”

Nile’s presence seems to remind Andy of her own essential humanity. Though Andy can’t even remember what her family looked like after all this time (and she was born in an age long before someone could just snap a picture), she understands the longing that Nile has for her family. And it leads Andy to a rather unexpected, and sacrificial, decision.

That said, all of the team members seem willing to sacrifice for each other. And even when we do see someone commit a highly ungenerous act, he does so because of a painful past experience.

We should also note that even the bad guys don’t necessarily have completely bad motives. Andy’s team is being pursued by a pharmaceutical company hoping to save and elongate the lives of millions. Sure, Merrick, the company’s CEO, seems more motivated by profits than philanthropy. But others—propelled by the suffering they’ve seen in their own families—sincerely (if misguidedly) believe that capturing and experimenting on Andy and her team can somehow still serve the greater good. In the end, though, the film repudiates that idea, reminding us that good intents can’t justify evil actions.

[Spoiler Warning] While Andy questions whether her team is doing good or not, someone tracking their history knows they are—and just how much. Andy will save a child, for instance, and that child grows up to invent an important vaccine. A rescued family eventually spawns someone who saved hundreds from the Khmer Rouge. “She saves a life, and two or three generations later, we reap the benefits,” he says. It’s almost as if they’re on a divine mission, saving certain people to keep humanity’s epic story on track. And speaking of which …

Spiritual Elements

… Nile is a Christian. After she comes back to life, we see her sitting on a cot, holding the cross hanging around her neck thoughtfully. And when she and Andy take a rickety plane back to the rest of Andy’s team, Nile bows her head.

“Are you praying?” Andy says with a laugh. “God doesn’t exist.”

“ My God does,” Nile insists.

Andy’s not moved. She dismisses the whole idea of a divine hand and mocks Nile for her faith. She says that once upon a time, she was worshipped as a god, and she’s seen enough horrific stuff to dismiss the idea of a protective Creator. Nothing means anything, Andy insists, though she admits that their own immortality is hard to explain.

“You should just keep following that illogic,” Andy says. “You’re already on board with the supernatural.”

Andy did have a bad experience with Christian believers back in the day. As she and an immortal friend tried to save some people accused of witchcraft sometime during the Middle Ages, they were naturally accused of being witches themselves. The fact that they couldn’t be killed “proved” their pact with the devil. As the two wait to be burned at the stake, a bunch of soldiers with a priest barge in and separate the two.

“For creatures such as you, there is no salvation,” the priest says, holding a huge wooden cross, taking one of the immortals out of the cell.

Andy’s team hides out in an old, deserted church (and does lots of killing there). One teammate, Nicky, prays before battle and tells passing villagers, “Peace be with you.” He insists that their lives, and their collective partnership, were “meant” to happen. Turns out, he and fellow team member Joe both fought in the Crusades—though on opposite sides.

“The love of my life was of the people I’d been taught to hate,” Nicky says. Which leads us to our next section.

Sexual Content

Nicky and Joe are lovers, and have been monogamously so for hundreds of years. “This man is more than you could ever know” when someone asks Joe if Nicky is his “boyfriend.” “His kiss still thrills me even after millennia.” Nicky calls his beau an “incurable romantic,” and the two men share a lingering kiss. We also see the couple waking up (fully clothed) in bed together.

This gay relationship is the only confirmed romance we see in the film—though when Nile spies a bare-breasted statue crafted by the famous artist Rodin, Andy admits that she knew the guy. “Probably biblically,” quips Booker, the fourth member of the team. We see a bit of cleavage, and some men are sometimes seen shirtless.

Andy’s team is sent to rescue a handful of kidnapped girls. “The youngest is 8. The oldest, 13,” someone tells Andy. Though it’s never expressed explicitly, we assume these girls will soon be separated and sold as part of a human trafficking ring.

Violent Content

After Andy kills a score of would-be attackers (to Nile’s appalled amazement), Booker tells her, “That woman has forgotten more ways to kill than whole armies will ever know.”

Perhaps the movie serves as a refresher course for Andy, because things then turn remarkably bloody.

Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of non-immortal humans are slaughtered—often, but not always, quickly. Most are dispatched via a bullet to the head (or a few to the chest), and a few fatalities are accompanied by briefs splashes of blood. Others have their throats cut. One man has the arteries in his legs swiftly and silently severed.

But some don’t die so easily. After a drawn-out fight, a man lands on his head and grotesquely snaps his neck. Andy sends an axe into another man’s neck, the weapon sticking partly out. A man falls to his death. In a flashback, we see a fellow with a horrific injury to his midsection slowly bleed out (blood burbling out of his mouth, as well).

But as bad as those injuries might be, they look fairly tame to those suffered by our damage-resistant immortals.

One takes a grenade explosion to his midsection; flesh and blood mix with what looks like hints of intestine, and the rest of his body looks bloodily mangled, too. (Even that, though, isn’t enough to keep him unconscious for more than a minute or so.) Another suffers a gunshot through the mouth: While we don’t see the shot itself, we do see the blood and gore as he revives.

Bone breaks are particularly grotesque, with slivers often sticking straight out of the skin (or, in one case, turning a set of fingers into practically a pipe-cleaner sculpture made by a preschooler) before the breaks heal without any long-standing damage.

Elsewhere, a throat is grotesquely slit. A brain is filled with a bullet. Characters are stabbed repeatedly and sometimes appear dead, their faces covered in blood and bodies pocked with wounds. One is injected with a massive, painful needle.

Our immortal protagonists take in more lead than a pencil factory. In flashback, we learn that one met a terrible “end.” The immortal was locked in an iron coffin and dumped into the ocean, destined to drown and revive and drown again until the end of time. (“It’s the reason we dread capture,” Nicky tells Nile. “[We don’t want to] spend eternity in a cage.”)

The recovery can be almost as ooky, with bodies squeezing bullets out of the wounds. And while Andy’s team may be immortal, every injury still causes pain. Nile finds this out herself when she sticks her hand in a burning fire, and she pulls it out covered, temporarily, by blisters.

People are punched and kicked, too. We see someone suffer from a cruel illness, and we hear about others in the same boat. Newspapers and press clippings tell of some old bloody incidents, while televised news reports describe some new ones. A plane nearly crashes. Someone jumps off a moving train. Merrick says that his company just released a drug that will save hundreds of thousands of lives … though the process killed a quarter of a million mice. When he views footage of the immortals at work, he calls the footage a “$2 million snuff film.”

Crude or Profane Language

Seven f-words and about 20 s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “sucks” and “p-ssed.” God’s name is misused twice (once with “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused three times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Andy guzzles quite a bit of vodka on a plane. Nile speculates that Andy drugged her to make her think that she’d died. A man staggers to his apartment, obviously drunk, and lets a whisky bottle fall from his hand. (It breaks on the floor.) People drink wine with dinner.

Merrick hopes to use the immortals’ DNA to craft life-saving, or life-extending drugs, and he brags how successful his scientists have been in creating lifechanging drugs in the past.

Other Negative Elements

Nile vomits. Andy threatens a would-be partner.

The Old Guard may feel fresh and new. But in some ways, it’s the same old story.

Anchored by a strong performance by Charlize Theron, Netflix’s latest actioner (based on a comic book of the same name) is one of the more intense, intriguing, throwaway action movies you’ll see during this COVID-interrupted movie season. It’s also among the bloodiest.

The violence here is frenetic, the gore unremitting. A same-sex relationship between two of our heroes could cause another swath of would-be viewers to push pause. And while the film offers some odd-but-resonant nods to God and transcendent purpose here, it’s not enough to redeem The Old Guard’ s failings.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The Old Guard Review

10 Jul 2020

The Old Guard

Who wants to live forever? So asked Freddie Mercury on the soundtrack to 1986’s Highlander , a film to which The Old Guard owes no small debt. That existential quandary lies at the heart of this Netflix original thriller, adapted by Greg Rucka from his and Leandro Fernández’s 2017 comic-book series. Charlize Theron ’s Andromache of Scythia (Andy to her friends) is a millennia-old warrior weighed down with undying ennui. Having spent most of recorded history up to her elbows in gore, she has witnessed the same old squabbles, the same inhumanity, and wonders if there’s any point to it all. But, after taking a year off (the immortal equivalent of a bank holiday) to contemplate, she and her ageless teammates ( Matthias Schoenaerts , Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli) reluctantly return to their calling as guns for hire. This time, though, the perennial quartet’s refusal to expire is captured on film, exposing their secret and leading to a showdown with the deadliest foe of all: an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company.

With regular swordplay (Andy herself favours a battle-axe), flashbacks in period garb, and a great deal of angsty hand-wringing over the downsides of eternal life (“It’s not what time steals, it’s what it leaves behind; things you can’t forget”), the film doffs a tartan cap at Connor MacLeod with little apology. But where Russell Mulcahy’s film (for all its hamminess) had a sweeping, epic scope that spanned history, The Old Guard is far more constrained. With a narrative anchored firmly in the present, hints at the depth of the immortals’ past are limited to coy allusions about Andy’s age, fragmented glimpses of her raising hell in the Middle Ages, and a rather clumsy scrapbook, complete with awkward Photoshopping alongside Martin Luther King. Beyond these superficial nods, there’s little real sense of who Andy or her companions really are; their experiences brushed past but never truly explored. Schoenaerts’ Booker opens up about how failing to age caused his children to spurn him, and there’s talk of another immortal who one day simply stopped healing and died, which made them all a bit sad. But these nods to emotional scar tissue aren't given sufficient room to breathe — the film too keen to skip over any meaty exploration of character to keep the plot moving. Kenzari and Marinelli’s characters — eternal lovers who met fighting on opposite sides of the Crusades — do have more texture to them, but even this is concentrated in a single, albeit touching, declaration of love in the back of a panel van.

Regular flurries of bullets and blades serve as the film’s main strength.

Despite the story limitations, Theron is on fine form as the Scythian Methuselah, borrowing Furiosa’s steely glower and channelling her aptitude for complex choreography previously showcased in Atomic Blonde . Director Gina Prince-Bythewood ( Love & Basketball ), who came close to adapting Sony’s since-abandoned Black Cat and Silver Sable movie Silver & Black , keeps the action fast and frantic. Regular flurries of bullets and blades serve as the film’s main strength, and while unlikely to give David Leitch any sleepless nights, The Old Guard gets points for leaning into the idea that the immortals can die, they just do so over and over again — with all the excruciating sensation that goes with it.

Most of the film’s humanity is rooted in KiKi Layne’s Nile, a young US Marine serving in the Middle East and the first new immortal in centuries. Wide-eyed and incredulous at her newfound resilience — she shrugs off an insurgent’s blade to the throat without so much as a scar — Nile makes a handy access point for the viewer, teasing out backstory and lending proceedings some heart along the way. Chiwetel Ejiofor is somewhat wasted in a his role as a shady ex-CIA wonk, while the film’s primary antagonist — a Big Pharma CEO played by Harry ‘Dudley Dursley’ Melling — is so overplayed as to veer into parody. This lack of character depth highlights the somewhat throwaway plot, which never quite manages to kick in to high gear. It’s particularly unfortunate that the film’s most promising subplot, involving imprisoned immortal Veronica Ngo, is almost entirely abandoned, leaving a potentially far more interesting tale untold.

Solid action beats and a story that skips from Sudan to Afghanistan, Paris and, finally, Guildford, ensure there's enjoyment to be had but The Old Guard remains a slightly disappointing revenge/conspiracy yarn, that never quite lives up to its excellent conceit. An intriguing coda does set the stage for a far more lively sequel, but short of a ratings landslide for this instalment, it's likely there can be only one.

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The Old Guard review: Netflix turns Charlize Theron into an immortal John Wick

Netflix has had plenty of success with its genre-spanning original television series, but its original films have been a mixed bag. The streaming video platform has produced some critical darlings (and even a few Oscar winners ), but has yet to produce the sort of mainstream, blockbuster film franchise that turns it into a serious contender in Hollywood.

Action comes easy

Casting a wide net, something old, something new, more to come.

The latest attempt at doing so is  The Old Guard , an action thriller starring Charlize Theron that casts the Academy Award winner (and  Mad Max: Fury Road standout) as an immortal mercenary who uses her particular set of skills to lead a crack team of her fellow deathless soldiers. When her team finds themselves hunted by a mysterious organization, they’re forced to go on the run while simultaneously tracking down a new immortal who has arrived in the world.

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Although  The Old Guard falls back on the familiar a bit too often, the world it builds and its charismatic cast keep things interesting and offer plenty of potential, even if it doesn’t end up being the franchise-spawning origin story it aspires to be.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood ( The Secret Life of Bees ,  Love & Basketball ) from a script penned by Greg Rucka,  The Old Guard is based on the comic book series of the same name created by Rucka and Leandro Fernández.

Much like  Extraction , Netflix’s recent action film that cast Marvel Studios veteran Chris Hemsworth in the lead role,  The Old Guard puts its high-profile star front and center and lets Theron remind us why she’s one of Hollywood’s most prominent female action heroes right now. Theron is a one-woman killing machine in  The Old Guard  and looks as comfortable dispatching wave after wave of heavily armed, nameless bad guys as any male lead out there.

Like some of the best action heroes on the screen right now, Theron finds just the right balance of gracefulness, brutality, and efficiency of motion in her fight sequences, but she’s not alone in delivering a good performance in  The Old Guard .

The film’s international cast is filled out by Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, and Luca Marinelli as the trio of immortal soldiers who have allied themselves with Theron’s character for several centuries, forming an unconventional family borne of watching everyone else they know grow old and die. KiKi Layne, who delivered a breakthrough performance in the drama  If Beale Street Could Talk , portrays an American soldier who must come to terms with her own newfound immortality and makes an impressive pivot to the action genre.

Rounding out the cast is Oscar-nominated  12 Years A Slave actor Chiwetel Ejiofor as a former CIA agent investigating Theron’s team and Harry Potter franchise actor Harry Melling as a billionaire industrialist who sees profit-making potential in the immortals.

All four of the actors cast alongside Theron as un-killable soldiers hold their own remarkably well through both the action sequences and the quieter moments, with Kenzari and Marinelli particularly memorable as warriors who fought on opposite sides of the Crusades, only to fall in love after dying on the battlefield. Layne is also a pleasant surprise as a capable action hero and handles the gunplay as well as the more dramatic elements as her character adjusts to life with her new, undying family.

Given his resume, Ejiofor feels a bit underserved by the story, while Melling is appropriately smarmy and morally bankrupt as the film’s primary villain. His character’s ultimate fate is satisfying on its own, but will likely be even more so for anyone unable to shake Melling’s association with Dudley Dursley , the spoiled brat he famously (or perhaps infamously) portrayed throughout the Harry Potter series.

Sadly, The Old Guard goes in a few too many predictable directions to hold any surprises.

Time and time again, the film layers one well-worn action trope after another on top of its otherwise intriguing supernatural premise, preventing it from standing out as much as it should, given its talented cast. There’s a sense of familiarity that runs through so much of The Old Guard that it never feels entirely fresh and new — something it needs to be if it aspires to be the first installment of a series.

The story does a nice job of world-building when it sets out to do so, however, and Rucka’s script makes the history of the film’s immortals feel like fertile ground for future stories — or at the very least, extended flashbacks. Each of the immortals introduced in the film feels like a fully fleshed-out character, and their individual journeys in the time before they met Theron’s character carry as much importance as their adventures with her.

That last quality is important because the film goes out of its way to lay the groundwork for a sequel.

On its own,  The Old Guard doesn’t generate the kind of excitement that would normally make a sequel a foregone conclusion, but the world it offers up is undeniably interesting and packed with potential.

To be fair, The Old Guard does a lot of things very, very well — particularly when it comes Theron and Layne’s performances and the future stories it teases. But the film ultimately falls short of doing anything that generates the sort of cheer-worthy, buzz-generating moments that typically convince a major studio to fast-track the next chapter of the saga.

Netflix isn’t the typical studio, though, and that could work in  The Old Guard ‘s favor. Prince-Bythewood, Rucka, and Theron (who also serves as a producer on the film) have crafted a compelling world of espionage, action, and secret immortals that could be well-served with another tale now that we’re past the introductory adventure.  The Old Guard didn’t quite do enough to absolutely ensure that happens, but it would still be nice to see what the future holds for the film’s colorful characters.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Charlize Theron, The Old Guard premieres July 10 on Netflix.

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The Old Guard review – Netflix immortality thriller won't live long in the memory

Not even Charlize Theron can save an action movie crying out for a comic touch to match the silliness of its premise

A sort-of-dull title for a sort-of-dull film. This is basically a two-hour dollop of action-movie product, teased out to look like a superhero origin story and touting (weakly) for the possible beginnings of a franchise property. DC Comics writer Greg Rucka has adapted his own graphic novel series of the same title and the director is Gina Prince-Bythewood, whose debut movie Love and Basketball from 20 years ago – about a young woman with a gift for basketball – I still remember fondly. That had a humanity and idealism that seems far away from this ponderous stuff, which is crucially lacking in the humour that might have sold the essential silliness of its premise.

Charlize Theron appears in the badass mode that is an important part of her screen persona: previously seen in Fast & Furious, Atomic Blonde , Aeon Flux and of course Mad Max: Fury Road . These days, she doesn’t appear comfortable unless she’s sporting an asymmetrical short haircut, dark glasses and a couple of Glocks . She plays Andy, the leader of a tough crew of mercenaries who get hired for large amounts of money to do dangerous stuff; helping her are Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). These soldiers of fortune have a secret: they are immortal. For decades and in fact centuries, they have been battling on the side of righteousness, standing up for the oppressed. There are some very ridiculous “olden-dayes” flashbacks showing Theron in ancient warrior headdresses solemnly galloping around on a horse.

Over the years, they’ve also supposedly been doing good by saving the lives of people whose children or grandchildren will one day do stuff like cure polio, although how they have the foresight to do this is a mystery, because prophecy is not among their gifts. The script also briefly concedes that they have to work for the bad guys once in a while (although this distasteful necessity is not shown) in orde to stockpile cash for food, guns, ammo and so on. But immortality is their sole superpower: they don’t have super-strength, or the ability to fly or be invisible. They are essentially no stronger and smarter than any of the ex-special-forces people that they wind up getting into fights with. It’s just that when you shoot or stab them, the wound heals up and they start over. Their millennia-long existence comes to a crisis when a new immortal joins their vampiric ranks: USMC officer Nile, played by KiKi Layne (from Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk ). And a certain shadowy CIA officer Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) approaches them with a deal, at the behest of creepy corporate kingpin Merrick (Harry Melling).

Theron always brings a certain hauteur and dash to her action and martial-arts sequences and Layne has real screen presence. It’s a pity that more of the movie could not have been about the meet-cute mentoring “ soromance ” between Andy and Nile. The adjective in the title is right. It gets old pretty quickly.

• Charlize Theron
• Action and adventure films
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