The
Old Guard
Came
out; 2020
Time;
2 hours 5 minutes
Watched
on; Netflix
Rating;
R for sequences of graphic violence and language
IMDB
Rating; 6.6/10
Caution;
Spoiler Alert
Staring;
Charlize
Theron as Andy
Kiki
Layne as Nile
Matthias
Schoenaerts as Booker
Marwan
Kenzari as Joe
Luca
Marinelli as Nicky
Chiwetel
Ejiofor as Copley
Harry
Melling as Merrick
Veronica
Ngo as Quynh
Natacha
Karam as Dizzy
Storyline;
Led
by a warrior named Andy (Charlize Theron), a covert group of
tight-knit mercenaries with a mysterious inability to die have fought
to protect the mortal world for centuries. But when the team is
recruited to take on an emergency mission and their extraordinary
abilities are suddenly exposed, it's up to Andy and Nile (Kiki
Layne), the newest soldier to join their ranks, to help the group
eliminate the threat of those who seek to replicate and monetize
their power by any means necessary
Thoughts;
This
was boring. I didn't really get much into it. The story was
pretty basic. These people can't die, someone figures it out,
they want to study them and figure out how to use their “power”
or inability to die. The plot summary below will literally tell
you everything about this movie. The only thing your missing is
the action.
Plot
Summary; CAUTION; Major Spoiler Alert
The
film starts with four people laying on the ground, riddled with
bullets. We hear the voice of Andromache the Scythian/"Andy"
(Charlize Theron) saying how tired she is of all this.
Sometime
earlier, Andy meets with one of her partners, Booker (Matthias
Schoenaerts) in Morocco. They join their other partners, Joe (Marwan
Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). The four of them are immortal
assassins who have lived for centuries. They are so devoted to
staying hidden that Andy must discreetly erase a picture that a group
of women took that she is seen in. They are set to meet with an
ex-CIA operative, James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who tasks them
with catching a militia responsible for terrorizing locals with
kidnapping and violence.
The
team accepts the mission and is flown to South Sudan. As they gear up
and enter the base, they quickly realize they were set up before the
militia in question steps out to mow them all down with bullets,
leading to the intro scene. The four lay bleeding until their powers
allow them to push the bullets out and heal quickly. The militia is
surprised but have little time to react further as the team starts
killing them, with Andy wielding her axe against the mercs. They spot
a camera and figure that Copley had set it up to expose their secret.
Andy destroys the camera, and the four escape and resolve to stick
together to find Copley.
In
Afghanistan, a team of U.S. Marines head into a base to rescue women
who are being held captive by a terrorist leader. Nile Freeman (Kiki
Layne) leads the team in, and one of the women directs her to the
target. Nile and her partners head in and shoot at the target. She
tries to stop his bleeding to take him in alive, but he grabs a knife
and slashes her throat. Nile's partner Dizzy (Natacha Karam) goes to
tend to her wound as Nile appears to lose consciousness. As this
happens, the four assassins experience the same vision of Nile
together, realizing that there is another like them that is out
there. They change course and head to find her. In the medic tent,
Nile's neck wound has completely healed, to the surprise of Dizzy and
the other Marines.
In
London, Copley attends a presentation from his employer, Merrick
(Harry Melling), who wants to have his company, Merrick
Pharmaceuticals, potentially save millions of lives with their
innovations. Copley shows Merrick the footage of the assassins after
the mission, and while he is impressed, Merrick wants hard physical
proof for his experiments.
Nile
is alienated by her teammates after the incident, and she is told she
is to be sent to Germany for more tests, despite her objections.
Before she is taken, Andy intercepts her and knocks out the other
soldiers before taking Nile with her. On the drive, Nile tries to
escape, and Andy steps out to shoot her in the head. Up until this
point, Nile thought she might have been dreaming, but she now
realizes that she really cannot die. They make it to an airbase where
a pilot takes them to France. After Andy falls asleep, she finds that
Nile tied her arm to the plane and is trying to force her and the
pilot at gunpoint to land the plane. Andy shoots the pilot and orders
Nile to free her so that she can fly the plane, but it turns out to
have just been a trick to get free, as the pilot was just playing
dead. Andy subdues Nile and forces her to continue going along with
their mission.
Andy
and Nile arrive at their hideout to meet the other guys. Nile is told
what their team does and how their powers work, as well as the fact
that they have lived through (and even been involved in) countless
historical events. Andy explains that they can eventually die, but
they never knew when it could happen or why/how it does, as they lost
a fellow immortal warrior centuries earlier after his wounds never
healed. At night, Nile wakes up startled after telling the guys she
saw a vision of a woman trapped in an iron coffin, screaming and
thrashing about. Booker tells her that the woman was a former partner
of theirs, Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), who was the first of the
immortals that Andy found. They were great friends and partners until
they were captured and continuously killed by people who thought they
were inhuman. Quynh was forced into the iron coffin and thrown into
the sea, where she remained trapped for 500 years, doomed to continue
drowning with no chance of escape, and Nile was able to feel all of
her pain.
Later
on, the hideout is attacked by some mercs working for Merrick. Booker
is incapacitated with a grenade, and his wounds take longer to heal,
while Joe and Nicky are captured. Andy finds some of the men and
kills them before she escapes with Nile and Booker. She is wounded
and finds that she is taking longer to heal.
The
mercs taunt Joe and Nicky as they try to separate them. When one of
them mockingly asks Joe if Nicky is his boyfriend, he gives an
impassioned speech about how Nicky is way more than that. They kiss
before the goons pull them apart. They are taken to Merrick, where
Joe headbutts him. He retaliates by trying to see proof of their
immortality by repeatedly stabbing Joe. Merrick has Joe and Nicky
taken to the lab while still demanding that the other immortals be
found.
Andy,
Nile, and Booker stop at an abandoned mine where some of their
belongings are. Andy fears that they may be tracked after she was
wounded by one of the men back at the hideout. As they plan their
next move, Nile continues to have questions about her newfound
destiny. She is more reluctant to go along after Booker says that he
has already outlived all of his children. Nile thinks about her own
mother and brother, and how they had to mourn her father when he was
killed in action. Andy goes to a nearby pharmacy to have her wound
tended to. Later, as they proceed to carry on their mission, Nile
decides to back out and spend whatever time she has left with her
family, and Andy lets her go. However, Nile later finds a gun clip in
the trunk of the car, realizing Booker intentionally gave Andy an
empty gun.
Andy
and Booker track down Copley and move in to get him, but Booker
reveals his alliance with Copley and shoots Andy in the back. He
justifies his betrayal by saying that Merrick may have found a way to
end their immortality so that they can die peacefully. Booker then
notices that Andy is still not healing as quick as she was. Merrick
has his men take her and Booker to join Joe and Nicky, fully intent
on potentially killing them all if it means he has found his
breakthrough. After Joe and Nicky find out about Booker's deception,
they turn on him as well.
Nile
finds Copley and forces him to help her rescue the others, but he is
more than willing after seeing what kind of man Merrick really is.
Copley had been gathering information on the exploits and heroics
that the immortals have performed throughout the centuries. They make
it to Merrick's building and kill his men before freeing the
immortals. Instead of leaving, Andy opts to stop Merrick then and
there to prevent him from hunting them any further. After killing
another slew of mercenaries, Merrick finds Andy and Nile. After he
attacks, Andy jams her axe into his neck, and as he tries to shoot
her, Nile tackles him out the window and they both land on a car.
Nile heals up while Merrick is a dead bloody mess. The team then
leaves together, and Andy's wounds eventually heal.
Copley
helps set up Nile's situation as being killed in action, meaning her
family will have to mourn her as they did her father. Meanwhile, the
other immortals force Booker into a century-long exile for his
betrayal, and he bids them farewell. The others decide to continue
working with Copley as long as he can help them stay hidden.
Six
months later, Booker drunkenly returns to his apartment in Paris. He
is greeted by a very unexpected visitor: Quynh.
