There’s something about Charlize Theron. Something that makes you feel that she can hammer anything to pulp (we are hoping the virus too, but that would be too much to ask even of Imperator Furiosa). It’s perhaps not that far an overreaching statement given that in The Old Guard, her mint-fresh action caper that’s just dropped on Netflix and zoomed to the top of the charts, Theron often ditches modern weaponry to get down and dirty with an ancient axe, pummeling her way through many an enemy.
It’s a full-blown action part, something that the tall and lithe Theron, blessed with both the physicality and the personality to carry off a role like this, embraces like second skin. The turn only cements Theron’s almost unchallenged status as the greatest female action star, at least right now. What she also does in The Old Guard, something that was perhaps lacking in both Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde, both hardcore action films where she kicked some serious ass, is the unmistakably strong emotionality that forms the core of the film. Which makes The Old Guard a unique beast: a refreshing spin on the superhero genre, and yet not a bonafide superhero story.
Theron’s no-nonsense Andy is mostly a one-woman army, functioning as the leader of a band of covert mercenaries. Andy is, of course, Andromache of Scythia, an immortal who has battled evil for centuries, with the film offering a singular and often lump-in-the-throat look at what it means to live forever. “Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting,” sums up an immortal somewhere in the middle of the film.
Based on Greg Rucka’s comic book of the same name, The Old Guard, directed with both heft and heart by Gina Prince-Bythewood, infuses the familiar superhero framework with a well-calibrated blend of thrills and humaneness. When it opens, we see Andy and her team regrouping after a break of a year (nothing more than an innocuous date-marker in the ocean of their lives that span centuries) to take on a job of rescuing a bunch of schoolchildren being held hostage in Sudan. That, however, turns out to be a set-up and the backdrop for the film’s first jaw-dropping action set piece — which is also when its definitive mic drop moment of sorts happens — where ‘The Old Guard’, as they are called, are gunned down ruthlessly, only to emerge from it minutes later with no more than a few scratches. That spurs the unscrupulous scion of a pharma company (Steven Merrick, played by Harry Melling) to send his men — led by former CIA man Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor, making an impression even in an underwritten part) — after Andy and her gang, so that their genetic code can be cracked to unlock the secret behind their immortality. Merrick is, of course, only trying to pass off his unbridled greed as a messiah complex.
Led by Theron, women are at the front and centre of The Old Guard
As Andy traverses the world, first escaping, and then engaging in a rescue and revenge mission to bring back her own, she chances upon a fifth immortal — the spirited Nile (Kiki Layne), doing duty as a US marine in Afghanistan.
Led by Theron, women are at the front and centre of The Old Guard. It’s the men (particularly Booker, played by Matthias Schoenaerts) who shed a tear or two battling an existential crisis, while the film’s mushy bits are delivered by same-sex couple Nicky and Joe (played by Luca Marinelli and Marwan Kenzari), both part of Andy’s army. Bogged down by guilt for having lost fellow immortal Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo) centuries ago, Andy has a world weariness inherent in her demeanour, but constantly shows who’s boss, picking up her axe and getting down to work even as the bodies pile up around her. It’s Andy’s scenes with Nile — whether it’s the action-packed hand-to-hand combat scene in an aircraft or the emotional conversation about family and humanity — that forms the backbone of the film.
What also keeps The Old Guard ticking — despite being impeded by genre convention and a thinly-written script that doesn’t delve as much into Andy’s antecedents as it should have (though the end well and truly screams out ‘sequel’) — is the strain of humour that runs through it. Like the scene where the immortals engage in a laugh having a ‘normal’ dining table conversation about who’s younger. Answers range from someone saying he fought alongside Napoleon to another claiming to being around during the Crusades. When asked, “Are you the good guys or the bad guys?” one of them pipes in with, “Depends on the century.”
And then, of course, is the jaw-dropping action. Theron is the one doing most of it and boy, does she make it convincing, often giving us the feeling that this is a film that should have been watched on the big screen. For our screens may be getting smaller but films like The Old Guard illustrate that cinema will always be big.
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