old guard movie review

Supported by

critic’s pick

‘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.

Share full article

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

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Even before his new film “Civil War” was released, the writer-director Alex Garland faced controversy over his vision of a divided America with Texas and California as allies.

Theda Hammel’s directorial debut, “Stress Positions,” a comedy about millennials weathering the early days of the pandemic , will ask audiences to return to a time that many people would rather forget.

“Fallout,” TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times .

“Sasquatch Sunset” follows the creatures as they go about their lives. We had so many questions. The film’s cast and crew had answers .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime and Hulu to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

Civil War Link to Civil War
Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
Scoop Link to Scoop

New TV Tonight

Under the Bridge: Season 1
The Sympathizer: Season 1
Conan O'Brien Must Go: Season 1
Our Living World: Season 1
The Spiderwick Chronicles: Season 1
Orlando Bloom: To the Edge: Season 1
The Circle: Season 6
Dinner with the Parents: Season 1
Jane: Season 2

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

Search Please fill out this field.
Newsletters
Sweepstakes
Movie Reviews

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

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

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.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘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

Share this article on Facebook
Share this article on Twitter
Share this article on Flipboard
Share this article on Email
Show additional share options
Share this article on Linkedin
Share this article on Pinit
Share this article on Reddit
Share this article on Tumblr
Share this article on Whatsapp
Share this article on Print
Share this article on Comment

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.

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Justice smith, dominic sessa join ariana greenblatt in ‘now you see me 3’ (exclusive), ‘the people’s joker’ review: a sharp dc parody delightfully crossed with a trans coming-of-age tale, cj’s miky lee to give usc school of cinematic arts commencement address, babs olusanmokun talks ‘the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare’ and a ‘dune 2’ surprise, dan goozee, renowned walt disney imagineering and movie poster artist, dies at 80, ariana greenblatt joining cast of ‘now you see me 3’.

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

Show more sharing options
Copy Link URL Copied!

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

-------------

Review: France’s first ‘Three Musketeers’ in decades kicks an old tale into high action gear

Dec. 8, 2023

A young woman looks pensive in a red dress.

Review: ‘Eileen’ has a great Anne Hathaway turn — and one of the year’s most shocking reveals

Nov. 30, 2023

Stephen Dorff as "Jaxxon Pierce", Photo by Danny Hiele. Courtesy of Utopia and Sumerian.

Review: Immortality is for sale in ‘Divinity,’ a sci-fi thinker destined for a long cult life

Oct. 20, 2023

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Review: ‘Home Alone’ with fangs, ‘Abigail’ is a comedy that goes violently wrong for kidnappers

April 16, 2024

An assemblage of props, including a bear in a top hat.

Travel & Experiences

Classic film lovers: See James Dean’s apartment and more on new TCM tour at Warner Bros.

Henry Cavill, left, and Natalie Viscuso pose for photographers at a movie premiere

Entertainment & Arts

Dad of Steel! Henry Cavill expecting first child with Vertigo exec Natalie Viscuso

Kirsten Dunst, left, and Cailee Spaeny in 'Civil War'

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

Netflix's The Old Guard Review

Life after deaths..

19 Movies and TV Shows You Didn't Realize Were Based on Comics

Netflix Spotlight: July 2020

Click through to see a spotlight of some of the most notable July Netflix offerings.

The Old Guard is a run-of-the-mill genre action movie at first glance that becomes so much more once you dive in. Charlize Theron delivers an excellent performance as Andy, a hardened, flawed, and complicated character who leads a team of undying mercenaries, each with their own intriguing backstories that go back hundreds of years. The story opens the door to a fascinating mythology of ancient warriors and immortality, although things get a little clunky when it comes time to explain how it all works. Still, The Old Guard is well worth watching if you’ve got an itch for something new.

More Reviews by Joshua Yehl

Ign recommends.

Take-Two Announces Layoffs While Canceling Multiple In-Development Projects

an image, when javascript is unavailable

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

Why I Wasn’t Scared by ‘Civil War’ 3 days ago
‘Sting’ Review: A Giant Spider Grows in Brooklyn in a Knowingly Cheeseball Indie Horror Trifle 5 days ago
‘Back to Black’ Review: Marisa Abela Nails Amy Winehouse in Every Look, Mood and Note in a Biopic at Once Forthright and Forbidding 1 week ago

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.

Popular on Variety

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.

More From Our Brands

Kimmel roasts trump for trying to pass alleged hush money as ‘legal expense’, robb report’s napa valley wine club has 3 stellar new reds on the way, caitlin clark smashes another tv record as wnba draft draws 2.45m, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, christina applegate: i was asked to join real housewives of beverly hills but ‘i would be the worst housewife’, verify it's you, please log in.

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

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.

More Movie Reviews

Dune: Part Two Is Zendaya’s Movie
Drive-Away Dolls Is Just Fizzy Enough
Pedro Almodóvar’s Queer Cowboy Short Is Too Sumptuous for Its Own Good
movie review
the old guard
gina prince-bythewood
charlize theron
matthias schoenaerts
comic books
superheroes
love and basketball
beyond the lights

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

Lower case letters (a-z)
Upper case letters (A-Z)
Numbers (0-9)
Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

‘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.

Editor’s picks

The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

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.

Kimmel Roasts Trump for Trying to Pass Alleged Hush Money as 'Legal Expense'

By Charisma Madarang

Ana de Armas Fans Settle False Advertising Lawsuit Over 'Yesterday' Trailer

Courts and Trials
By Tomás Mier

Newly Discovered Video Brings Tony Soprano Back to Life — But We Have Questions

Sopranos Lore
By Alan Sepinwall

'Rust' Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison

'Rust' Shooting
By Daniel Kreps

Is This the End of 'Bluey'?

DOG DAY AFTERNOON

Most Popular

Ryan gosling and kate mckinnon's 'close encounter' sketch sends 'snl' cold open into hysterics, keanu reeves joins 'sonic 3' as shadow, michael douglas is the latest actor to make controversial remarks about intimacy coordinators, masters 2024 prize money pegged at $20m, up $2m from prior year, you might also like, jimmy buffett tribute at hollywood bowl brings together paul mccartney, eagles, snoop dogg, harrison ford, brandi carlile, jane fonda and scores of stars, as q1 revenue falls, lvmh plays the waiting game, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, inside that epic ‘shogun’ episode 9 moment: ‘the best scene of the season’, caitlin clark smashes another tv record as wnba draft draws 2.45m.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

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.

Movies | 11 05 2022

TV Series | 15 09 2021

Movies | 17 02 2021

Movies | 20 07 2020

Movies | 15 07 2020

Movies | 14 07 2020

Movies | 10 07 2020

Movies | 10 06 2020

Screen Rant

The old guard review: netflix's movie delivers truly thrilling action.

What The Old Guard lacks in well-paced, tightly plotted story, it more than makes up for with compelling characters and slick, thrilling fight scenes.

Comic book superhero movies have been popular for long enough now that Hollywood studios have turned to the less well-known properties in an effort to launch new potential franchises, and The Old Guard falls into this category. Based on the same-named comic book series created by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández, the movie follows a group of mercenaries who are actually ageless immortals that heal from all their wounds - even those that would be fatal. Gina Prince-Bythewood ( Beyond the Lights , Cloak & Dagger ) directs the movie from a script penned by Rucka himself. What The Old Guard lacks in well-paced, tightly plotted story, it more than makes up for with compelling characters and slick, thrilling fight scenes.

The Old Guards follows Andy (Charlize Theron), a thousands-of-years-old immortal warrior and her group of fellow ageless fighters: Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). When their secret is discovered by former CIA agent Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the group finds themselves on the run from being captured and tortured by pharmaceutical company CEO Merrick (Harry Melling), who wants to discover the secret of their immortality. To make matters more complicated, a new immortal has awakened, U.S. Marine Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), who Andy must track down and induct into their group. With Nile resistant to the idea of her immortality and Merrick's forces closing in, it remains to be seen if Andy and her warriors will be able to escape a fate worse than death.

Related: The 25 Best Films on Netflix Right Now

Rucka's story for The Old Guard follows a fairly standard format for sci-fi/fantasy properties, where the audience follows a character new to the world as a way of introducing the rules. Further, Nile's arc to becoming a hero, where she's reluctant at first, and Andy's jaded mentor, are similarly familiar to those who are well acquainted with these kinds of stories. Still, the world Rucka has constructed in The Old Guard is a fascinating one, and he deftly pulls back the curtain slowly, so that viewers don't have to sit through too much exposition all at once. Rucka's script also effectively uses every bit of world-building to further develop the characters, and add some emotional texture to their lives as immortals. However, these quiet moments of exposition and character development tend to slow down the movie too much at times, dragging down the pace of the action film to a near-standstill. While this may work for some viewers, others will find themselves getting distracted.

It doesn't help that when The Old Guard has an action scene, the fight choreography and Prince-Bythewood's directing is so riveting, it's impossible to look away. Because Andy and her fellow fighters have been warriors for centuries, they're comfortable using all kinds of weapons, from modern guns to swords and battle axes, and The Old Guard puts that to good use. What's perhaps even more unique is the choreography of the group, which is done in such a way that Andy, Booker, Joe and Nicky fight as if they're four parts of a whole weapon. It's incredible to watch because action movies rarely feature such choreography, but it makes sense for their characters since they've been fighting together for centuries - it's only natural they'd be just as aware of each other as they are of their own limbs. This attention to detail in Prince-Bythewood's directing is what elevates The Old Guard's fight scenes above and beyond many other action movies.

For their parts, the cast of The Old Guard also works incredibly well together to bring these compelling characters to life. Theron has proven her skill as an action star in the past, particularly in Mad Max: Fury Road , and she brings that same badass energy to Andy in The Old Guard . Layne, who plays Andy's new "recruit" Nile, is also a force to be reckoned with, holding her own alongside Theron and the rest of the cast. The two are the undeniable leads of The Old Guard , but Kenzari and Marinelli are standouts as Joe and Nicky. The two bring plenty of heart and comic relief to the movie, which is much needed to balance out the seriousness of Andy and Nile - though they have their light-hearted moments as well. Schoenaerts, as the other member of the group, also has his moments, though he's given less to work with; the same goes for Ejiofor and Melling. Altogether, The Old Guard's cast works seamlessly together to bring entertaining and emotional character dynamics to the screen.

Ultimately, The Old Guard offers plenty of exciting action and fun character beats to keep viewers hooked even when the story screeches to a halt. It's an excellent escape for fans of the comics, superhero movies and anything with slick action scenes. And with The Old Guard releasing on Netflix, audiences still staying at home and avoiding movie theaters can easily tune in to this perfect summer popcorn movie. Though the film may devote a little too much time to setting up a potential sequel, that can be said of almost every franchise starter these days - and there's sure to be many fans dying to see what happens next with this group of immortals. (Studios also should be knocking down Prince-Bythewood's door to direct more superhero/action movies after this.) In the end, anyone even vaguely interested in the premise or seeing Theron in another action movie would do well with checking out The Old Guard .

Next: The Old Guard Movie Trailer

The Old Guard is now streaming on Netflix. It is 118 minutes long and rated R for sequences of graphic violence and language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Key Release Dates

The old guard.

The Old Guard (2020)

User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

User Ratings
External Reviews
Metacritic Reviews
Full Cast and Crew
Release Dates
Official Sites
Company Credits
Filming & Production
Technical Specs
Plot Summary
Plot Keywords
Parents Guide

Did You Know?

Crazy Credits
Alternate Versions
Connections
Soundtracks

Photo & Video

Photo Gallery
Trailers and Videos

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

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.

Latest Reviews

Irena’s Vow

Sasquatch Sunset

The Long Game

Weekly Reviews Straight to your Inbox!

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Charlize Theron as Andy in The Old Guard

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
Superhero movies
Film adaptations
Comics and graphic novels

Comments (…)

Or browse by category:

Get the app
Movie Reviews
Best Movie Lists
Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

Best TV Lists
Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
Common Sense Selections for TV
Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

Book Reviews
Best Book Lists
Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

Game Reviews
Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

Podcast Reviews
Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

App Reviews
Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

YouTube Channel Reviews
YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

Explaining the News to Our Kids

Family Tech Planners
Digital Skills
All Articles
Latino Culture
Black Voices
Asian Stories
Native Narratives
LGBTQ+ Pride
Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

The old guard, common sense media reviewers.

Smart female-led action saga has heart; violence, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Good triumphs over evil. Individual integrity, cou

Team players (male and female) are brave, compassi

Tons of gory action violence. Heroes are pitted ag

A kiss. A couple is in a (very) long-term committe

Occasional profanity includes "f--k," "a--hole," "

Social drinking by adults. One hero carries a flas

Positive Messages

Good triumphs over evil. Individual integrity, courage, and behavior can generate positive social change. Values promoted include loyalty, a passionate commitment to helping others, gender and ethnic equality, compassion, resourcefulness.

Positive Role Models

Team players (male and female) are brave, compassionate, moral, determined, loyal, smart. Sympathetic characters make mistakes but learn from them. Ethnic and gender diversity throughout, as well as LGBTQ representation. Stereotypical greedy, power-hungry villain is from the pharmaceutical industry.

Violence & Scariness

Tons of gory action violence. Heroes are pitted against hordes of mercenaries and villains. Intense battles, individual hand-to-hand combat, point-blank gunfire. Weaponry includes machine guns, knives, grenades, handguns, ax, swords. Characters bleed, suffer, die. Bodies are strewn on the ground. Lengthy close-ups of fatal wounds. Characters are kidnapped and held captive. A person struggles to escape from an underwater tomb.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A kiss. A couple is in a (very) long-term committed relationship.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional profanity includes "f--k," "a--hole," "s--t," "pissed off."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking by adults. One hero carries a flask and sometimes drinks excessively. A scene takes place on an airplane with drugs and drug smugglers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Old Guard is a fast-paced, gory action-adventure movie with two brave, highly skilled women (Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne) in the lead roles. It's based on Greg Rucka's graphic novels about a small team of immortals who travel the world over the centuries to help humanity. Frequently, their mission involves battles and fighting, so expect lots of violent sequences of bloody battles and their aftermath, both in the present and in historical flashbacks. Dead and wounded bodies abound. Weaponry includes guns (both handguns and automatics), swords, grenades, knives, an ax, and brutal hand-to-hand combat. The lead characters can heal from even the gravest wounds (like Deadpool and Wolverine): Their gruesome, should-be-fatal injuries are shown often. Occasional profanity includes "f--k," "s--t," and "a--hole." There's one kiss. Adults drink in social settings, and one man carries a flask that he sometimes drinks from. A scene set on a plane involves illegal drugs. Underneath all of the fighting and blood are strong themes of teamwork, loyalty, integrity, perseverance, and courage. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (12)
Kids say (24)

Based on 12 parent reviews

Pretty Pathetic - Too many loose ends

Fantastic film, amazing role models, what's the story.

In THE OLD GUARD, a masterfully skilled, courageous team of immortal warriors agree to a dangerous rescue in modern day. Unfortunately, once Andy ( Charlize Theron ), Booker ( Matthias Schoenaerts ), Nicky (Luca Marinelli), and Joe ( Marwan Kenzari ) arrive in South Sudan to liberate schoolchildren held hostage, they discover their task was a ruse. They've been set up by Copley ( Chiwetel Ejiofor ), a man who identified himself as a highly placed security agent when he sought their help. The team narrowly escapes but is now aware of imminent danger. At the same time, their extraordinary senses let them know that another immortal has appeared on earth, the first in more than 200 years. Nile ( KiKi Layne ), a U.S. Marine serving in Afghanistan, must be extracted from her military base and made a part of their small band. At first, Nile is confused, horrified, and disbelieving, but ultimately the team of four becomes five. Their mission now is to find Copley and determine how their immortality was detected and stop those who have made them targets.

Is It Any Good?

Dazzling action, an intriguing story, and talented actors make this female-driven adventure well worth the time; the writing and some thought-provoking notions about immortality make it special. Gina Prince-Bythewood , now the first Black woman to direct a big-budget actioner, delivers on both grand and intimate scales. The device of introducing a novice who needs to be schooled in the whys, wheres, and hows of the characters' origins works wonderfully well; the audience absorbs the backstory along with the newbie. And, though The Old Guard is based on a series of graphic novels, it's played with straightforward honesty and intimacy, not the often tongue-in-cheek tone of most comic book superhero tales.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in The Old Guard . What emotions does the brutality evoke? Is it exciting or horrifying, or both? How does the fact that two of the movie's action heroes (Andy and Nile) are skilled and successful women change existing female stereotypes? Why is it important to understand how the violence in the film may impact kids ?

Pick one of the members of The Old Guard team. What valuable character strengths (i.e., perseverance, courage, integrity) does that team member have? Then, pick one of those strengths and show why it was important to her or to him.

The final scene of this movie, along with other carefully integrated hints, lets the audience know that there will be a sequel to The Old Guard . What were some of those clues? Would you want to see more stories about The Old Guard ? Why or why not? What can you expect to see next time? How do you think companies decide whether or not to create a sequel or sequels?

The Old Guard 's tagline is: "Forever is harder than it looks." How does the movie explain this statement?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : July 10, 2020
Cast : Charlize Theron , KiKi Layne , Matthias Schoenaerts , Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director : Gina Prince-Bythewood
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Black directors, Female actors, Black actors
Studio : Netflix
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Adventures , Great Girl Role Models , History
Character Strengths : Courage , Integrity , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 118 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : sequences of graphic violence and language
Last updated : February 18, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Want personalized picks for your kids' age and interests?

The Hunger Games

Wonder Woman

Movies with strong female characters, books with strong female characters, related topics.

Perseverance
Great Girl Role Models

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Action/Adventure
Children's/Family
Documentary/Reality
Amazon Prime Video

More From Decider

'The Golden Bachelor' Stars Gerry Turner And Theresa Nist Divorcing Three...

'The View' Reacts To O.J. Simpson's Death: "The Tragedy Was The...

'The View' Forced To Evacuate Their Studio Before Wednesday's Show After...

'X-Men '97' Gives Gambit a Hero Moment You'll Never Forget

Holly Madison Says She “Tried” Exotic Dancing But Doesn’t Have...

'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' at 10: The Movie That Made (and...

Joy Behar Says She Was "Dragged Into" Controversy Over Beyoncé's 'Jolene'...

Guy Fieri Calls Drew Barrymore "Gangster" For Talking With Her "Mouth Full...

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Old Guard’ on Netflix, in Which Charlize Theron Kicks Butt Forever, Almost Literally

Where to stream:.

The Old Guard

(Siren emoji) POTENTIAL FRANCHISE ALERT (siren emoji): The Old Guard sure seems like Netflix’s next big thing, a superhero saga — based on a comic book you likely haven’t heard of — primed and ready for as much crossover success as its gruesome violence allows (which is a more-than-fair amount, he said cynically). Veteran director Gina Pryce-Bythewood jumps from Love and Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees to a visually dynamic genre, hopefully proving herself capable of bringing refreshing textures to a medium-to-large-ish-budget mainstream venture.

THE OLD GUARD : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The broadsword is the first clue this four-person hero squad isn’t your typical black-ops outfit. I mean, when you acquire a weapon that’ll last you for centuries, why wouldn’t you hold onto it? They are IMMORTAL and they are WARRIORS and they are more than a little TORTURED by it. They are the Old Guard, led by Andy (Charlize Theron), but I shall call her ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA, as that’s what’s on her birth certificate, although that document is likely long gone, perhaps lost or destroyed at or around the Battle of Hastings. She’s been around a while, is what I’m saying, longer even than her fellow quick-healing, nigh-eternal warriors: gay lovers for the ages Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), and total newb Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who’s only a couple centuries old.

So this gang of four lives and works underground, hiring itself out for good deeds, e.g., rescuing schoolchildren when they’re held hostage by a militia in Morocco. That’s what Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) enlists them for, but as that one guy in that one movie said, it’s a trap. They’re gunned down, and caught on camera being like totally immortal as heck, you know, magically shedding bullets, mending any compound fractures and gingerly picking themselves up off the ground — such things won’t kill them, but they can still feel painnnnnnnnnn.

Copley set ’em up to confirm his suspicions of supernaturalism, and intends to funnel them to pharmaceutical bigwig Merrick (Harry Melling), believing he’s wants to use immortals’ DNA and other bodily goops to develop drugs to combat humanity’s many ailments. But true to big-pharma form, Merrick is a sadistic capitalist shithead who only foresees profits atop profits, and perhaps Copley, and his giant crazy-guy superfan bulletin board full of clippings and string and pushpins documenting ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA’s many centuries of noble deeds, has some regrets.

So the Old Guard is in a bit of a pickle. Reinforcements will be recruited just in the nick: they all share a dream — that’s how they find other immortals, see — about Nile (Kiki Layne), a U.S. Marine who took a knife to the jugular while subduing a person of interest in Afghanistan, and improbably woke up soon after without even a phantom tickle. ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA snatches her up, and you’d think maybe explain things a bit, but no, our 1,000-year-old protag is gruff and cryptic. ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA takes a long, long pull on a bottle of Ouzo (I know, yuck, right?) and they get in a fight, possibly to see if Nile can handle herself. (Note: Nile can handle herself.)

The Old Guard now numbers five. The more impossible-to-kill people, the merrier, I always say, especially when you have a mad pharma-monger siccing his private army of faceless goons on you. This is officially a goddamn action-adventure now. There are rules to thee immortal existence for Nile to learn, of course. And will everything get complicated? When does everything ever not get complicated?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: In the realm of Charlize Theron action films, The Old Guard is better than Aeon Flux but not as good as Mad Max: Fury Road .

Performance Worth Watching: Layne was luminescent in If Beale Street Could Talk , and The Old Guard proves she’s capable of dramatically embiggening goofy genre fare like this.

Memorable Dialogue: Andy sums up Nile to the other immortals: “She stabbed me, so I think she has potential.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I have so many questions. What if you cut off ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA’s head, and take it really far away? Will the head grow a new body, or will the body grow a new head, or will they both grow their missing portions and we end up with TWO ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIAs? The immortals heal themselves physically muy rapidamente, but what about psychological trauma? Is that covered by immortality insurance? I would assume so, at least somewhat, considering the lifestyle brings with it the burden of centuries of pain and loss that’d send one of us 79-years-and-change-on-average types tumbling into crippling despair. Do they go to analysis? If so, what mortal, trustworthy doctor could handle the sheer mass of psycho-damage, and not violate HIPAA laws?

Maybe this stuff will be covered in a sequel (if so, can I have story credit?), since The Old Guard introduces enough wriggly and succulent storybait worms (two words: DEATH LOOP!) to suggest someone is hovering o’er a keyboard, waiting for this movie to ball-peen enough effing skulls to warrant the green light. And maybe this is the quarantine crazies talking, but the movie is fairly fresh superhero fodder, conceptually sturdy and poised to fill a void for those of us who haven’t seen an MCU movie for a whole entire year, which equals a thousand million years in MCU years.

Stream It Or Skip It

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Immaculate’ on VOD, a Horror Outing That Finds Sydney Sweeney in the Habit of Delivering Dread

Stream it or skip it: ‘dune: part two’ on vod, denis villeneuve's grand action epic that easily bests its predecessor, stream it or skip it: ‘immediate family’ on hulu, a music doc that celebrates the session musicians who brought a generation of jams to life , stream it or skip it: ‘hans zimmer: hollywood rebel’ on netflix, a short doc about one of hollywood's leading composers.

Prince-Bythewood manages to deliver the goods consistently despite some silliness and rampant setting-it-all-upness. It’s fairly standard stuff of this ilk, a little bit better than most thanks to Layne and Theron’s charisma and some pretty cracking action sequences, which are good, but not Atomic Blonde good. There’s a whole lotta plot, the pop-music soundtrack is watery and listless in this context and it’s occasionally too gory for young audiences to watch when their parents are in the room. But Theron adds a nifty double-curved-blade ax to her action-film arsenal, it earns its deep-ish emo beats and it sometimes actually feels like it adequately conveys the consequences of death. It also leaves you feeling like a sequel would be better, deeper, richer. Gotcha.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Old Guard isn’t great, but it is pretty good, and has the potential to get better. There’s no reason for this not to be a big fat hit.

Should you stream or skip #TheOldGuard on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) July 11, 2020

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

Stream The Old Guard on Netflix

superheroes

Does 'Yellowstone' Return Tonight? 'Yellowstone' Season 5, Part 2 Premiere Date, Kevin Costner Updates, And More

Is 'Civil War' Streaming on Netflix or HBO Max?

'Dune: Part Two' Comes to Digital, But When Will 'Dune 2' Stream on Max?

'The View' Reacts To O.J. Simpson's Death: "The Tragedy Was The Injustice"

Stream It Or Skip It: 'Anthracite' On Netflix, About Four People Trying To Solve A Ritualistic Murder In The French Alps

Woody Allen in Exile: 'Coup De Chance' Finally Arrives On Streaming, Where No One Will Shame You For Watching

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the old oak.

Now streaming on:

Eighty-seven-year-old filmmaker Ken Loach's "The Old Oak" is about how changing demographics in a struggling English town called Durham manifest in a crumbling old pub, the last public space that everyone claims as their own. This is Loach's latest and (according to Loach) final motion picture, and it feels like a summation. It's as engrossing, thoughtful, heartfelt, angry, hopeful, and altogether valuable as his best work. If it is indeed Loach's farewell, it's one hell of a fine note to go out on.

There are almost always scenes in Loach's films where a group of locals gathers in a shared space to argue about issues that affect all of them. The space here is the bar of the title, owned and operated by TJ Ballantyne ( Dave Turner ). TJ assists a local charity spearheaded by Laura ( Claire Rodgerson ) that gives donated furniture and other household items to Syrian war refugees. TJ is a goodhearted and tough but depressed man who lost his wife and son many years ago and dotes on his little dog. He has grown increasingly disenchanted with his core group of patrons, a bunch of men his age who blame immigrants for a decline in living standards that predates the newcomers' arrival by decades. There's even a gallery of photos in a shuttered back room of the bar commemorating local labor struggles back when TJ was a teenager and Durham was still built around coal mining.

The film begins, like many Loach movies, by dropping you into the middle of a conflict. A group of Syrians have arrived in town by bus and are being harassed by white locals (some of whom apparently aren't even from the neighborhood; hate tourists, basically). One of the new arrivals is teenaged Yara ( Ebla Mari ), a budding photojournalist who shoots the old-fashioned way, on 35mm film. She documents her family's arrival, including their harassment by the xenophobes telling them to go back to a war zone that's already shattered their spirits (Yara's father is missing and presumed dead). One of the bullies steals Yara's camera and turns it on the newcomers and then, when confronted, gleefully drops it on the pavement, breaking it.

This sparks the beginning of Yara's relationship with TJ, which forms the backbone of "The Old Oak" and unites the different story strands—and the fractured community as well. TJ invites Yara into the back room of his bar, which hasn't been used in decades due to plumbing and electrical problems, and offers her a replacement 35mm camera from a collection that once belonged to his late uncle, who took photos of the town's mining heyday that hang framed on the walls. The film takes its sweet time perusing those pictures and even lets TJ give Yara a tour through time and space as they look at them. We get the sense of the weight of the past (always a factor in Loach's movies, whether the past is nostalgically fantasized and false or based on something real, which is the case here) and also of the mercurial present. Thus begins a believable and quietly powerful story consisting of simply written and blocked scenes that explore the dynamics of the town.

Loach and his regular screenwriter Paul Laverty (a legend in his own right, though a comparatively unsung one) do their usual thing, which is write characters who are representative of certain "types" but feel like real people and have specific concerns or issues, then set them all loose, letting them do what they'd do if they existed, even if it means that they step on each other's feet or angrily smash against each other. One of the many remarkable things about "The Old Oak" is how it allows us to see and feel everyone's point of view, including the perspectives of characters who are mainly looking for human targets to direct their formless frustrations at, and are wrong on the merits.

Exhibit A is the locals who blame immigrants for a gradual economic decline that's the fault of ruthless corporations and the post-Thatcher government, not immigrants. A couple of important early scenes feature one of the bar regulars, Charlie ( Trevor Fox ), grousing that local homes are being bought up cheaply by faceless foreign corporations that are looking to rent them or turn them into Air B&Bs, and that don't even have the basic courtesy to send a human into the town to look at the properties they're vacuuming up. Meanwhile, he and his wife scramble to pay the upkeep on their own home. They are trapped, economically unable to either stay put or sell. You get why Charlie would be furious and, in his zeal for scapegoats, would cast a wide net that pulls in not just the newcomers but the people trying to make their resettlement less painful.

It's unreasonable on its face that anyone should be mad at TJ and Laura for bringing donated items to war refugees (they exemplify Christian values far more than the xenophobes and racists who mock newcomers for being brown and Muslim and joke about them being terrorists). But you can also see how the white citizens of Durham would resent their own kind helping newcomers while they themselves struggle through a life that's not as dire as what the refugees are dealing with but is still nothing to joke about.

An especially piercing moment sees Yara escort a local white teenager back to her house after she collapses during an athletic event due to lack of food; Tara then goes into the girl's family's kitchen to find her something to eat and learns that the cupboard and fridge are almost bare. In an earlier scene, TJ and Laura give a little Syrian girl a bike while three local boys look on. TJ explains that it's an old bike that was donated, but that doesn't make an impression on the boys, one of whom states that he also wants a bike. Nobody in this scene is wrong. There's just a lot that needs to be worked out, and the factors contributing to the the conflict are beyond the scope or understanding of any one person in the scene.

Loach and Laverty have a clearly defined hierarchy of values that applies to all of their collaborations. They're socialists who believe in a collective community and government responsibility to care and uplift. They define that responsibility against the narcissistic ruthlessness of capitalism and the governments it has corrupted and captured, and tie it back to an increasingly marginalized and mocked sense of what Christian values are supposed to be about.

It's relevant to the story that Durham was once organized around the local church, which was revered not just for its religious function but for the way the buildings themselves were physically connected to the community through the workers who built the place. The church is still operational but is an abstraction to most of the characters, including TJ, who hasn't set foot inside it for many years. The decline of the church (which of course had its own problems) explains why The Old Oak has become such a valuable and fought-over meeting spot.

The movie named for the bar has a spiritual dimension that was often downplayed in early Loach works. This is expressed not just through arguments and monologues about the moral responsibility to help the less fortunate, but through scenes of characters getting together and doing something helpful, whether it’s bringing a mattress to a newly arrived family or staging a potluck dinner that will introduce the refugees to the locals. This reaching-out process builds new relationships that represent the economic safety net that was destroyed. But it can’t replace it, because individuals don't have the power of governments.

Loach has always told stories that use real locations and some nonprofessional actors, encourage improvisation, and take their stories from contemporary or historical events that affect the everyday lives of working and/or struggling individuals. These are not the kinds of films where billionaires fly to Norway on a private jet to plot a corporate takeover, nor are there genre movie elements (horror, science fiction, film noir, etc). The camerawork (overseen here by Robbie Ryan ) focuses on capturing moments of interaction between individuals and groups of people rather than making statements on its own. The aesthetic is as rigorous in its way as any that you see in work by filmmakers who are more ostentatiously formalist in their approach.

There are echoes of social realist or "kitchen sink realist" playwrights like John Osborne ("A Look Back in Anger") and Arthur Miller ("All My Sons," "Death of a Salesman") in the scenes delving into TJ and Sora's friendship, the pain of their pasts, and the quiet tragedy of their stories and those of all the other characters going largely unnoticed by the wider world. Several of them echo one of the signature speeches in "Death of a Salesman," by Linda, talking about her salesman husband Willy: "Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person." This is an entire movie filled with Willy Lomans, some more likable than others, all worthy of attention.

The entire exercise often plays like a documentary record of actual events for which a camera happened to be present. You truly feel as if you're getting a slice of life. Often in Loach's films it's a bitter slice. That's not the case with "The Old Oak," a drama that has many troubling or devastating moments but barrels through them, and lets the characters emerge with shreds of hope for a better future.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Now playing

A Bit of Light

Peyton robinson.

Sleeping Dogs

Brian tallerico.

On the Adamant

Peter sobczynski.

Film Credits

The Old Oak (2024)

113 minutes

Dave Turner as TJ Ballantyne

Ebla Mari as Yara

Claire Rodgerson as Laura

Trevor Fox as Charlie

Chris McGlade as Vic

Col Tait as Eddy

Jordan Louis as Garry

Joe Armstrong as Joe

Chris Gotts as Jaffa Cake

Andy Dawson as Micky

Paul Laverty

Latest blog posts

Ebertfest 2024 Announces Full Lineup, With Guests Including Eric Roberts, Mariel Hemingway, Larry Karaszewski, and More

How Do You Live: On the Power of Edson Oda’s Nine Days

Eleanor Coppola Was the Guardian Angel of Apocalypse Now

The Overlook Film Festival 2024 Highlights, Part 1: Fasterpiece Theater, Exhuma, All You Need is Death, Me

IMAGES

The Old Guard Movie Review (2020)
The Old Guard: Movie Review
The Old Guard Review: Netflix Action Movie Showcases Immortal Heroes
The Old Guard movie review: Charlize Theron is better than standard
The Old Guard movie review
The Old Guard movie review

VIDEO

The Old Guard Movie Error Part 2
The Old Guard Movie Errors Part 1
The Old Guard Film Explained in Hindi & Urdu Summarized
The Old Guard Movie Errors Part 3
The Old Guard Movie

COMMENTS

The Old Guard movie review & film summary (2020)
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 ...
The Old Guard
The Old Guard is a thrilling action movie about a team of immortal warriors who face a new threat from a ruthless enemy. Find out why critics and audiences love this adaptation of the graphic ...
'The Old Guard' Review: Fighting to the Death, and Beyond
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 ...
The Old Guard
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. Daniel Gorman In Review Online. The Old Guard ends with a post ...
The Old Guard (2020)
The Old Guard: Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. With Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari. 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.
The Old Guard movie review: Charlize Theron is better than standard
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 ...
'The Old Guard' Review
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 ...
'The Old Guard' review: Charlize Theron, superhero reinvented
Review: 'The Old Guard,' starring Charlize Theron, breathes fresh life into superhero cinema. Buried deep in "The Old Guard," Gina Prince-Bythewood's swift, somber action-thriller, is an ...
Netflix's The Old Guard Review
The Old Guard is a run-of-the-mill genre action movie at first glance that becomes so much more once you dive in. Charlize Theron delivers an excellent performance as Andy, a hardened, flawed, and ...
Charlize Theron in 'The Old Guard' on Netflix: Film Review
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 ...
The Old Guard
Generally Favorable Based on 45 Critic Reviews. 70. 76% Positive 34 Reviews. 22% Mixed 10 Reviews. 2% Negative 1 Review ... I watch The Old Guard and try to imagine a new world, one where other comic-book movies are this well made and breathtaking. ... you look at the name of the movie and say; "meh". But The Old Guard is far from being a Meh ...
Movie Review: Netflix's The Old Guard, with Charlize Theron
Movie Review: Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne, 'The Old Guard' is an adaptation of a 2017 comic book that, even as it offers plenty of great ...
'The Old Guard' Review: Charlize Theron Kickstarts a New Action Franchise
July 7, 2020. Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlize Theron, and Luca Marinelli in 'The Old Guard.'. Aimee Spinks/NETFLIX. Former atomic blonde Charlize Theron goes nuclear brunette to play Andromache the ...
The Old Guard Review
The Old Guard Review. People: ... who came close to adapting Sony's since-abandoned Black Cat and Silver Sable movie ... ensure there's enjoyment to be had but The Old Guard remains a slightly ...
The Old Guard Movie Review
The Old Guard Review: Netflix's Movie Delivers Truly Thrilling Action. What The Old Guard lacks in well-paced, tightly plotted story, it more than makes up for with compelling characters and slick, thrilling fight scenes. Comic book superhero movies have been popular for long enough now that Hollywood studios have turned to the less well-known ...
The Old Guard (2020)
The story is childlike, the direction dull and the development highly predictable. The goodies, the baddies and the double crosser. All fluffed up with fight scenes, explosions and gunfire. The action is probably the only realistic thing, even if it is plastered all over the place for no good reason. The effects are all good and have grit.
The Old Guard review
The Old Guard review - Charlize Theron has an axe to grind This article is more than 3 years old Theron lets rip as immortal warrior Andy in Gina Prince Bythewood's fast-paced but patchy comic ...
The Old Guard
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.
The Old Guard (2020 film)
The Old Guard is a 2020 American superhero film directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and written by Greg Rucka, based on his comic book of the same name.The film stars Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Harry Melling, Veronica Ngo, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and follows a team of immortal mercenaries on a revenge mission.
The Old Guard review
Not even Charlize Theron can save an action movie crying out for a comic touch to match the silliness of its premise Peter Bradshaw Fri 3 Jul 2020 11.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 3 Jul 2020 11.02 EDT
The Old Guard Movie Review
The Old Guard Movie Review. 1:11 The Old Guard Official trailer. The Old Guard. Community Reviews. See all. Parents say (12) Kids say (24) age 16+ Based on 12 parent reviews . Autumn S. Adult. April 10, 2022 age 18+ Pretty Pathetic - Too many loose ends This movie is just terrible.
The Old Guard Movie Review
The Old Guard is a fun, exciting, and entertaining superhero movie. Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne both stand out particularly as badasses among badasses. Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic: - When it was clear that Theron's character would be rescuing Layne's character and showing her the ...
'The Old Guard' Netflix Review: Stream It or Skip It?
Powered by Reelgood. (Siren emoji) POTENTIAL FRANCHISE ALERT (siren emoji): The Old Guard sure seems like Netflix's next big thing, a superhero saga — based on a comic book you likely haven ...
The Old Oak movie review & film summary (2024)
Powered by JustWatch. Eighty-seven-year-old filmmaker Ken Loach's "The Old Oak" is about how changing demographics in a struggling English town called Durham manifest in a crumbling old pub, the last public space that everyone claims as their own. This is Loach's latest and (according to Loach) final motion picture, and it feels like a summation.

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

Explore More in TV and Movies

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Email not verified

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Movies / TV

The Old Guard Reviews

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

Related Articles

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

site categories

David Rooney

Related Stories

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

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

More to Read

Review: France’s first ‘Three Musketeers’ in decades kicks an old tale into high action gear

Review: ‘Eileen’ has a great Anne Hathaway turn — and one of the year’s most shocking reveals

Review: Immortality is for sale in ‘Divinity,’ a sci-fi thinker destined for a long cult life

More From the Los Angeles Times

Review: ‘Home Alone’ with fangs, ‘Abigail’ is a comedy that goes violently wrong for kidnappers

Classic film lovers: See James Dean’s apartment and more on new TCM tour at Warner Bros.

Dad of Steel! Henry Cavill expecting first child with Vertigo exec Natalie Viscuso

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

Netflix's The Old Guard Review

19 Movies and TV Shows You Didn't Realize Were Based on Comics

Netflix Spotlight: July 2020

In This Article

More Reviews by Joshua Yehl

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

Owen Gleiberman

Popular on Variety

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

More From Our Brands

Netflix’s The Old Guard Is Breathtaking

More Movie Reviews

Most Viewed Stories

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

Sign In To Continue Reading

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

Peter Travers

Editor’s picks

Kimmel Roasts Trump for Trying to Pass Alleged Hush Money as 'Legal Expense'

Ana de Armas Fans Settle False Advertising Lawsuit Over 'Yesterday' Trailer

Newly Discovered Video Brings Tony Soprano Back to Life — But We Have Questions

'Rust' Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison

Is This the End of 'Bluey'?

Most Popular

Verify it's you

The Old Guard Review

Related Articles

Screen Rant

Key Release Dates

The Old Guard (2020)

Did You Know?

Photo & Video

Related Items

Recently Viewed

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

The Old Guard

Content Caution

In Theaters

Home Release Date

Distributor

Positive Elements

Spiritual Elements

Sexual Content

Violent Content

Crude or Profane Language

Drug and Alcohol Content

Other Negative Elements

Latest Reviews

Irena’s Vow

Sasquatch Sunset

The Long Game

Weekly Reviews Straight to your Inbox!

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

Comments (…)