THE OLD GUARD: Millennials

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Writer: Greg Rucka
Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harry Melling, Veronica Ngo
Runtime: 125 mins.
2020

[If you don't know anything about this movie... one of the great pleasures of the film is the reveal of the premise. I recommend it if you're looking for a solid but flawed action movie; spoilers from hereon out.]

The Old Guard is historically noteworthy: the first major blockbuster to be directed by a Black woman, and the first superhero film to explicitly portray a queer romance.* It's an embarrassment to the industry that neither happened until 2020, but that's good old white supremacist Hollywood for you.

*Give or take a throwaway gag in Deadpool 2.

The film follows four immortal mercenaries who have made it their life's work to combat evil in the world. They have fought with armies, hunted down terrorist cells, and prevented disasters under the leadership of the ancient Andromache, or as her fellow mercenaries call her, Andy (Charlize Theron). A certain FBI agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has learned of their existence, and is collaborating with corrupt pharmaceutical company CEO Merrick (Harry Melling) to capture the secret of immortality. The squad aren't worried about being killed thanks to their regenerative powers, but they understand that this sort of cat and mouse game inevitably leads to capture and torture. Just as the situation is getting spicy, visions of a new immortal accost their senses-- ex-marine Nile (KiKi Layne) who just survived being killed in action by an Afghani terrorist. They must convince Nile to join them on the run, or she will suffer an unenviable fate.

There's a conspicuous discordance between the two above paragraphs. Namely that the creative team on this film is extremely diverse for an action movie, yet the plot description sounds like any other white male colonizer-mindset action slugfest. The film casts an all-woman team of marines, and it portrays them as heroic warriors rather than representatives of America's violent hegemony. The film casts a renowned Black actor as an FBI agent who turns out to be one of the good FBI agents. The film villainizes the evil white CEO, but then doesn't connect his villainy to the capitalist system that created him. The film is trying to pull a fast one by serving up patriarchal white supremacist politics that hide behind a diverse coat of paint. It's the 'more female CEOs!' joke taken to its natural conclusion. This Wokewashing is arguably more nefarious because it is a way for the established order to remain structurally oppressive despite making aesthetic concessions. For that reason I don't know whether or not we should applaud these milestones. Maybe a golf clap.

The one quality of the film that deserves unequivocal praise is its action. The fights in action movies are often handled by the second unit director, so I don't know whether to give Prince-Bythewood or the large second unit directing team the lion's share of the credit for the crisp choreography we see onscreen. Clearly the team involved has an eye for rhythm in violence. The fight scenes are the only fully successful expression of these characters' immortality-- they fight with brutal efficiency after centuries of experience. The editing, cinematography, fight choreo, and special effects are all tight. The result is Wickesque, despite never reaching the heights of those films. Andy and her team are artists of death.

None more so than Charlize Theron, whose ancient battle axe is instantly iconic. Theron has without a doubt become one of our greatest living action stars, a performer always willing to bring Academy Award gravity to genre silliness. The script is far too coy with her character (Andy frequently alludes to how old she is and then refuses to say how old she is), but Theron manufactures an internal world of quiet immensity that drags behind Andy everywhere she goes.

The rest of the film is decidedly regular.** The only other standout performer is Harry Melling, who plays up the cartoon of the snivelly capitalist to an appropriate level of camp. The script is lowest common denominator, going in on all the obvious action movie tropes and refusing to truly examine its central premise. There's also an odd discordance between the page and the screen. During the climax, a vulnerable Andy tells Nile that she will breach a heavily guarded room first. Nile argues that that doesn't make any sense, to which Andy responds with a mini-monologue about how she must always go first, and Nile can go first next time. After all that set-up, all Andy does is poke her head around a corner and fire off a couple shots before letting Nile do the same thing. That's like an anti-payoff. Missed opportunities are as casually littered throughout as bullet casings.

**The exception is the pandering soundtrack, which is actively bad.

The Old Guard is the definition of a solid turn your brain off movie. Like every Netflix movie it ought to be cut down by 20+ minutes, but I am grateful to it for correcting the flaw of so many superhero films: mediocre action. This laudable trait even almost justifies the movie's sweaty sequel hook.

2.5 / 5  BLOBS