Can you still remember those halcyon days when a summer weekend might include leaving the house, going to a multiplex, joining an eager crowd in a big theater, and then watching a terrific action adventure? Well, watching “The Old Guard” on Netflix involves none of those pleasures we took for granted—except for the terrific action adventure. That’s plenty to be thankful for, under the circumstances. Turns out that the movies didn’t get small, at least not all of them, only the screens.
What makes this film seem big on almost any home screen—though please don’t take that to mean watches, phones, tablets or laptops—is Charlize Theron, a formidable presence under any circumstances, in a role that’s worthy of her. She plays an ageless warrior named Andromache of Scythia. At first I misheard her name as Andromache Forsythia, which seemed pleasantly poetic, but no, she’s of Scythia, and goes by Andy for short. A woman with contemporary cool who wields monster automatic weapons as expertly as her trusty double-bladed ax, she derives her agelessness not from her classic beauty, though of course Ms. Theron has that part covered, but from being 2,000 years old, give or take, and immortal—at least so far.
“The Old Guard” was directed with verve and humor—and unexpected feeling—by Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love & Basketball”) from Greg Rucka’s adaptation of his powerful graphic novel series of the same name; Leandro Fernandez gets a screen credit as comic book co-creator. Barry Ackroyd and Tami Reiker did the excellent cinematography. The extremely old guard in question is a sort of extra-special forces team, similarly immortal, that has fought for righteous causes across the ages, and the visual and dramatic style borrows astutely from film noir.
Marwan Kenzari, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlize Theron, Luca Marinelli and Kiki Layne
Photo: NetflixWhen the story begins the fighters are four—Andy, their leader, and three brothers in arms, Booker, Nicky and Joe, played respectively, and vividly, by Matthias Schoenaerts, Luca Marinelli and Marwan Kenzari. But fate, which operates in ways that test their endurance and our credulity, leads the team to acquire another woman, Nile (fine work by KiKi Layne, from “If Beale Street Could Talk”), and, as it develops, another immortal. She’s a young U.S. Marine who has just suffered what should have been a fatal injury on combat assignment in Afghanistan. An unwilling recruit who can’t comprehend her miraculous survival, Nile thinks she’s being kidnapped, and at one point she buries a knife in Andy’s shoulder. Removing it with a mixture of faint fatigue and charming annoyance, Andy says, “Can you please not do that again?”
The action component is, in a word, febrile. In four words it’s a delightfully febrile concoction that gives the team a mad nemesis, Merrick (a funny performance by Harry Melling), the youngest CEO in Big Pharma and an entrepreneur who hopes to merchandise immortality by cracking the genetic code of the old soldiers who literally never die. The film can’t sustain its nearly two-hour length. Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves better writing than he gets in the role of a CIA operative named Copley. Sags set in during long discussions of the team’s past—we’re talking about centuries here—and its uncertain future. Yet even those dialogue patches confer rewards—droll recollections (Booker joined the group in 1815) and tender reminiscences (Nicky and Joe, passionate lovers for more centuries than they can count, talk fondly of that time in Malta, whenever it was, and resolve to go back).
Through it all Ms. Theron makes the fragrant nonsense believable; more than that, she makes it affecting—the physical combat as well as the drama. In “Atomic Blonde” her fight scenes were impressive but the film as a whole was frigid. Here her character fights, and lives, with a tragic sense that’s based in the writing and direction, and amplified by Ms. Theron’s performance, at once witty and reflective, even melancholy.
Charlize Theron
Photo: NetflixAndy is an existential heroine who doesn’t believe in a deity, but soldiers on all the same. Her wounds heal, but they hurt, and she has experienced more pain than she can continue to endure. Like her comrades, she has no idea why she’s been given this burden of responsibility, and she’s haunted by the suspicion that her team’s struggles count for little if anything in the grand scheme of things. What makes “The Old Guard” special is that, for all its canny action tropes, the film really does deal with the prevalence of evil in the world, and the limits of doing good. It’s a lot to squeeze into a smaller screen.
Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com
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