The Old Guard

With the likes of Black Wid­ow and Won­der Woman 1984 on ice due to the impact of COVID-19 on cin­e­mas, stream­ing has expe­ri­enced a bumper few months, with many dis­trib­u­tors weigh­ing up the pros and cons of releas­ing their 2020 slate on demand rather than gam­bling on the pub­lic being will­ing and. able to pack into cin­e­mas any time soon. Of course, for native stream­ing ser­vices, this has been a busy time, and Net­flix con­tin­ues to lead the charge, respon­si­ble for lock­down hits such as Tiger King and Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods.

Their lat­est release is also one of their glossi­est: a super­hero action movie about a band of inter­na­tion­al mer­ce­nar­ies who just so hap­pen to be immor­tal. Is this a sign of Net­flix gear­ing up to take on the might of Mar­vel and DC? All the hall­marks are there: cer­ti­fi­ably cool source mate­r­i­al (Greg Ruc­ka and Lean­dro Fernández’s graph­ic nov­el series of the same name) great direc­tor (Gina Prince-Bythe­wood, return­ing to fea­ture direct­ing after six years work­ing on seri­alised TV) and a clutch of cred­i­ble, bank­able stars (Char­l­ize Theron, KiKi Layne and Chi­we­tel Ejiofor).

Cer­tain­ly Net­flix man­ages to suc­ceed at one thing Mar­vel and DC have always fal­tered at: por­tray­ing a gay char­ac­ter with­out it feel­ing like tokenism. In The Old Guard, two of the ensem­ble, Nicky and Joe, (Mar­wan Ken­zari and Luca Marinel­li) are in a long-term rela­tion­ship – their love for each oth­er plays a part in the sto­ry, but cru­cial­ly it feels com­plete­ly sin­cere (lest we for­get Marvel’s attempt at LGBT rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Avengers: End Game.) On a sim­i­lar note, Prince-Bythe­wood is the first Black woman to direct a com­ic book movie; a land­mark moment, even if it’s stag­ger­ing to think it’s tak­en this long.

Cred­it too is due to Theron, whose action game as Andy, the no-BS leader of the gang, is as strong here as it was in Mad Max: Fury Road, and her brusque­ness is once again com­bined with a gen­uine emo­tion­al core. She is tired of watch­ing her friends die and, despite her best efforts to pre­vent glob­al cat­a­stro­phes across the mil­len­nia, the world nev­er seems to get any bet­ter. She has also become dis­il­lu­sioned with their mys­te­ri­ous abil­i­ties and omnipo­tence. KiKi Layne – in her biggest role since she wowed in Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ If Beale Street Could Talk – plays Nile, who presents to Andy and the gang a chance at redemp­tion, but only if they can out­wit the nefar­i­ous phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny hot on their tails.

The antag­o­nist plot of the film, Har­ry Melling’s hood­ie and sport coat-wear­ing CEO, is where things fal­ter, as the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion leans heav­i­ly into famil­iar tropes of sadis­tic doc­tors and mon­ey-grab­bing British vil­lains. Even though the film pos­es some big ques­tions about moral­i­ty, indi­vid­ual sac­ri­fice for the greater good and the emo­tion­al toll of liv­ing for­ev­er, it doesn’t give itself much room to answer them, jump­ing from one action scene to the next in a man­ner that doesn’t quite give the char­ac­ters a chance to breathe.

Even so, it’s a pleas­ing shot of escapism for these strange days, stymied by con­ven­tion but boost­ed by charis­ma and an earnest­ness often for­got­ten in the hyper-seri­ous world of com­ic book movies. It could do with a few less dis­tract­ing nee­dle drops, but if Net­flix are hop­ing for a sequel (and an end cred­its scene sug­gests as much) there’s cer­tain­ly enough ground­work here to enter­tain the idea.