Netflix
By Andrea Thompson
Action movies are every bit as much wish fulfillment fantasies as rom-coms. We want to believe that people are capable of these kinds of breathtaking physical stunts, this formidable of a mindset, and that they could not only stand up to the bad guys, but beat them against all odds, just as we want to believe in the great love stories.
In real life we know our heroes seldom live up to our impossibly high expectations, or they prove to be all too vulnerable, to pressure and bullets alike. And love can fade, or turn to outright contempt with little to no explanation save for the slow, mundanely cruel struggles of everyday life.
Part of the genius of the Netflix film “The Old Guard” is how brilliantly director Gina Prince-Bythewood gives us this fantasy while updating it for our times. There’s not just a damn good reason our action heroes survive everything their adventures have to offer, from hails of bullets, slit throats, and falls from multiple stories, there are major drawbacks to such resilience. If the immortals in “The Old Guard” no longer have any reason to fear death, an eternity of imprisonment offers chills galore.
Our introduction to this world is Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a Marine who gets her throat cut when she’s on a mission to take out a military target in Afghanistan, only to find herself healed without a scratch. When she’s approached, or rather, kidnapped by the world-weary Andromache, or Andy (Charlize Theron), she receives explanations, but precious few answers. Andy and the rest of her team, who are also immortals, not only don’t know how or why they received their gifts, they’re also on the run from those who wish to exploit their abilities.
What they have done is spend their time assisting those in need, which is a welcome change in a genre which often seems more interested in taking the time to reassure us that the men dying on-screen are evil in order to justify disposing of them with relish. But “The Old Guard” is more interested in telling us about the people Andy and her men are rescuing, rather than delving into the lives of those who victimized them.
Just as remarkable is the team’s diversity, with Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky’s (Luca Marinelli) relationship not only treated as a simple matter of fact, but spelled out with one of cinema’s most beautifully poetic declarations of love before adding another entry to one of its most passionate kisses. Such a simple thing as a great love story between two men shouldn’t feel so monumental, but it remains so, since the genre’s also known for its reverence for not just traditional masculinity, but hypermasculinity, and often has difficulty doing right by female love interests, let alone two male ones.
Netflix
Skill like this also goes a long way towards excusing plot holes, and this is one area where “The Old Guard” is by no means an exception. You’ll not only excuse Nile still having her phone, but perhaps the biggest hole of all, and that is people continuing to trust CEOs. But multiple people make the decision to trust Merrick (Harry Melling), who’s not just any CEO, but the head of a pharmaceutical empire. Why anyone would be shocked that he turns out to be, shall we say, ethically challenged is beyond me.
Good thing there’s the incredible action scenes to distract. Andy and her cohorts may heal from any injury inflicted on them, but they still feel pain, and they aren’t gifted with any other power such as super strength. Their abilities come from the fact that they’ve had a very long time to hone their combat skills, and their time on the run is less than glamorous. You’d think they’d have made a few investments, but these action heroes don’t have unlimited access to a vast horde of resources; they hide out in trains and long abandoned buildings while they’re figuring out their next moves.
Gina Prince-Bythewood saves the most satisfying fantasy for the end, where she gives us a taste of something we crave about as much as love: meaning. When the team gets a small sense of what their actions have wrought for humanity over just the last 150 years alone, it’s a realization that perhaps they are a part of a larger story after all, one that consists of humanity continually choosing their better natures. In our current moment, perhaps that’s the most unlikely belief of all, but “The Old Guard” sells it with such conviction that you can’t help but hope for the best, not just for its characters, but for us all.
