The Old Guard (2020)
Starring: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias
Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harry Melling,
Veronica Ngo
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Action Director: Daniel Hernandez, Johnny Gao
We’ve
been getting a lot of female spy/assassin action-thrillers as of late. The
trend (probably) started around 2010 with Angelina Jolie headlining the
blockbuster film Salt. In the past
few years, however, the production of these films has ramped up, especially
from 2020 to the present. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the success of
the John Wick movies, but there may
be other factors involved. The Old Guard is
sort of an outlier in the lot, being less a female-empowerment action film and
being more John Wick by way of Highlander.
The
premise of the film is pretty simple: Charlize Theron (Atomic Blonde and Mad Max:
Fury Road) plays Andromache, or “Andy” for short, a Scythian warrior woman
who is one of a small band of immortals that roam the Earth. A born fighter,
Andy had joined forces with a number of other immortals to work as mercenaries
to order to improve the world. Her compadres are: Booker (Red Sparrow’s Matthias Schoenaerts), who discovered his immortality
while fighting in the Napoleanic Wars; Joe (Marwan Kenzari, of Black Adam and the live-action Aladdin), a Muslim warrior from the Era
of the Crusades; and Nicky (Luca Marinelli, of the 2021 Diabolik remake), an Italian knight who fought Joe in those same
wars before becoming his lover.
When we
meet the team, the four are meeting up in Marrakech (in Morocco) sometime after
their last mission. A former CIA agent named Copley (Redbelt’s Chiwetel Ejiofor) has contacted them to conduct a rescue mission
in southern Sudan. Some Islamist militants have kidnapped a bunch of
schoolgirls because…well…girls shouldn’t study in fundamentalist Islam. Andy
reluctantly takes the job—she’s weary of taking jobs in the same region too
close together—and it turns out to be a trap. They are gunned down by a bunch
of heavily-armed soldiers, although their immortal abilities allow them to get
back up and dish out the death to their enemies. Knowing they’ve been set up,
Andy sends the other three to their safe house in Paris while she investigates the
possibility of a new immortal.
The
rookie would be Sergeant Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a Marine serving in
Afghanistan. Her immortality is revealed when she shoots a terrorist, who then
slices her throat open as she’s tending to his wounds (the mission was to take
him alive). The next day, she’s alive and well, with nary a scratch where a
huge cut should be. Obviously, the entire company now looks at her suspiciously
and the military has plans to ship her away into isolation. Andy shows up in
the nick of time to rescue Nile, although the latter is very reluctant at
first.
At the
same time, we learn that Copley is in the employ of the evil Big Pharma CEO
Merrick (Harry Melling, best known for playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films). Merrick wants to
experiment on the immortals in order to determine the secret of their longevity
and healing factor and change the world…while getting filthy rich in the
process. Copley tracks the mercenaries down to their Paris hideout and, in the
ensuing melee, capture Joe and Nicky. That leaves Andy, Booker and Nile to
rescue their compadres, but there’s a catch: Andy’s wounds are now taking
longer to heal, which means that her immortality is now reaching the end of its
cycle.
As an
action movie, The Old Guard is
adequate entertainment. It runs into the snag that many action films do: the
best action sequences occur early on and the pacing is interrupted by a slow,
exposition-filled second act. The climax, for all it wants to be a John Wick movie, is also weak, even with
the added “suspense” of Andy’ failing “health.” A weak middle section is
especially bad in this case of this particular credit, since it leans back on
the “hero(ine) refuses to accept her destiny” cliché for drama. I have a
personal disgust for that story trope, so any movie in this day and age that
employs it is likely to get on my bad side.
I also
think that the movie needed a bit more imagination. There are a few brief
flashbacks set in period, especially pertaining to Andromache’s tragic
backstory involving another fellow immortal, played by Furie’s Veronica Ngo Thanh Van. I would have liked to have seen
more scenes set in period to establish what it had been like to be a Scythian
warrior or for two crusaders on opposite sides to fall in love. While the
immortals do use swords and axes in some of the action sequences, I would have
liked to have seen more creativity in the make-up and costume design. The idea
that you’d have a Scythian barbarian woman dressed like Aeon Flux killing
people with automatic weapons doesn’t feel like the writers were really milking
the premise for all its worth.
Moreover,
I felt that the main villain being an evil CAPITALIST was a bit weak sauce. I
mean, his motivations are sound given the industry he works in, but he’s not
particularly imposing and since his henchmen are all normal humans, there’s not
a lot real competition for the heroes to overcome. A sequel is apparently in
the works, and the final scene suggests that it will pit immortals against
other immortals, so that should be interesting.
The
action sequences were staged by Daniel Hernandez and Johnny Gao. Hernandez has
been a stuntman in Hollywood for 20 years now, working on all sorts of action
and fantasy films. In recent years, he has graduated to fight choreographer,
contributing to the action sequences in Thor:
Ragnarok; the last two Avengers
movies; and most recently The Woman King
(which was also directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood). Gao hasn’t been working in
Hollywood that long, but recently assisted in the fight scenes for Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
and The Woman King—both he and
Hernandez must have really gotten along with Gina Prince-Bythewood. Hernandez
trained Charlize Theron for the film, teaching her elements of aikido, judo, karate, and HEMA,
or Medieval Martial Arts[1].
Theron looks good in her fights, matching her nicely-played cynical do-gooder
with the requisite physicality.
As I
said before, the first two set pieces are the best. In the first one, the
protagonists take on a room full of soldiers, fighting them off with guns and
swords—Charlize Theron’s character fights with an axe. It begins with a Highlander-esque display of our heroes’
indestructability, and then becomes a complexly-choreographed scene, a web of
blocks, parries, slashes and gunshots. I have to say it really sets the stage
for the rest of the movie. Sadly, the scene only lasts about a minute and the
rest of the movie doesn’t live up to it.
The next
fight is a one-on-one fight between Andromache and Nile, who still hasn’t
accepted her destiny as an immortal. The fight is set on a cargo plane and is a
nice, old-school exchange of punches and blocks, Hong Kong style. KiKi Layne tends
to stick with more brawling moves, while Charlize Theron focuses on grappling
and joint locks. There is a nice move where she runs up the side of the plane
to flip around KiKi, bringing her down in a jiu-jitsu lock. It was probably
wire assisted—there is a wire operator listed on the IMDB—but it looked neat.
The
climax is mainly standard gunplay, with Theron throwing in some judo moves a lá Keanu Reeves in John Wick. As I said, there isn’t much
suspense of the immortals getting killed because…well…they’re immortal.
Charlize gets to kill people with a fire axe and then throws down with a
hulking security guard armed with a dagger in a one-sided fight (in her favor).
It’s a competent set piece, but it doesn’t get the adrenaline pumping like the earlier
sequences did. And after the slowly-paced middle section, I wanted a bit more
than a tamer version of John Wick to
conclude this film.
[1] - According to one article, her
training included everything from Chinese wushu
to Greek pankration to Israeli krava maga - https://castingfrontier.com/charlize-therons-intense-training-for-the-old-guard/.
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