The Old Guard

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
Distributed by Netflix, July 10, 2020

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Cast:

• Charlize Theron as Andy / Andromache of Scythia
• Kiki Layne as Nile Freeman, a former US Marine who served in Afghanistan
• Matthias Schoenaerts as Booker / Sebastian Le Livre, once a French soldier who fought under Napolean.
• Marwan Kenzari as Joe / Yusuf Al-Kaysani, a Muslim warrior who had participated in the Crusades, as well as Nicky’s lover
• Luca Maeinelli as Nicky / Niccolò di Genova, a former Crusader. He and Joe started off as enemies, but became lovers after discovering their immortality
• Chiwetel Ejiofor as James Copley, former CIA agent grieving the loss of his wife from ALS
• Harry Melling as Steven Merrick, greedy CEO of a pharmaceutical empire
• Van Veronica Ngo as Quynh
• Anamaria Marinca as Dr. Meta Kozak
• Joey Ansah as Keane

“It’s not what time steals, it’s what it leaves behind, Things you can’t forget”

Andy

The Director gives one of the best Netflix superhero film of 2020, based on a comic book of the same name. Apart from the screenplay by Greg Rucka, another best feature of the film is that the director, Gina, did a fantastic job by building the main characters. The History of each character is shown beautifully.

The film sets out the journey of four gifted individual fighting for humanity and on the way discovering another gifted individual. The elite group of individuals is lead by Andy. With immortality as an advantage, the director has beautifully shown the disadvantage as well. We can distinctly feel it through the faces of the characters of how it feels to lose someone very close to heart. But to everyone’s surprise, this immortality comes with an expiry date but none knows when. The film is a good combination of drama as well as Action.

As we move ahead in the film, flashbacks clearly reveals the past of Andy, how along with her friend,Quynh, have been fighting for the right cause, since mankind existed.

The movie starts with them taking a project from one of their past contacts, of rescuing kidnapped school girl. Although it was there ground rules not to repeat orders from the same contacts, but they felt the urgency of the situation and accepted it ofcourse.

They sets out to rescue the girls. The best scene which left me awestruck was, “one bullet, two headshot”. Damn, you will love this scene. But they later found out that, it was a setup to check their immortality.

(Hardcore action awaits)

The group of four is now about to be joined by a 5th member, Nile, a marine stationed in Afghanistan whose slit throat during an operation suddenly heals itself. The elite band begins to have visions of Nile and so does she, which only shuts once they have all met. Till then, Booker was the youngest joining in 1812.

Andy sets out on her own journey to find Nile. In one scene, The director has clearly showcases the inability of Nile to accept the reality followed by a very good fight between Nile and Andy, wherin Andy tests Nile’s fast
ability to heal.

Later Nile and Andy joins the elite band where they talked about their whereabouts-their losses, their love interest etc. They talks about how Andy gathered all of them and formed an group. Andy also had a partner named Quynh, who was caught by Christians, who caged her in a wooden box and thrown in the sea, not to be found again. She is living with the guilt of not being able to save her till then.

During the same night, they are captured by troops of evil pharmaceutical Merrick. They capture Joe and Nicky, they are being tortured in the lab and set up for experiments. Andy with the remaining two fights back and kills most of the troops. The three then flee to Andy’s safehouse, where Nile discovers all the ancient artifacts that clearly proves all the facts she heard before about her.

Now their mission is to rescue the remaining two members from the hold of Merrick. The story moves ahead with a taste of Love, betrayl, self realisation and we see a great teist followed by approximately 20mins of extreme action.

The movie has a happy ending with Quynh meeting Booker, thus indicating a sequel.

My Verdict:

This movie is a good mixture of Drama and action together. I would rate 7/10 to this because of its screenplay and action sequences. It would have been more interesting with a strong story line, even though the character build up is excellent.

Trailer of The Old guard is attached here.