Critique: The Old Guard (Film)

Well this was a surprise. A bloody brilliant one. I only played it because I thought my younger brother would enjoy it (which he did)! A little bit action, a little bit supernatural, and a whole lot of leading female protagonists.

 

The fight scenes were executed to perfection. It seamlessly blended physical combat and guns together. Whilst fighting different targets, the characters still had precise interactions to benefit each other, showing a high degree of general awareness and teamwork. The choreographers who coordinated these scenes are talented. I’m even tempted to say that the fight scenes were exciting.

 

Andy leads the immortals in fighting for just causes.

Andy is feeling disenfranchised because helping people no longer makes the world a better place. Then Nile, a young soldier, becomes the newest immortal just when a pharma company causes trouble.

Their immortality is based on amazingly fast healing and regeneration, meaning they can ‘die’ repeatedly and never age. They died as normal people but resurrect as immortals; their immortality can be lost as randomly as it was gained.

A pharma company wants to harness the immortals’ DNA in order to make money (excuse me, to save lives). But if it was DNA, one would expect immortality to show up in at least one of their families.

If DNA caused immorality, why does the fast regeneration only happen after death? An individual’s gene expression can change based on certain environmental factors/pressures and death, being stressful to the body, would count as an environmental pressure.

Perhaps the pharma company only thought it was DNA that contained the secrets of immortality. With such scientific minds, they would have to attribute immortality to something concrete and tangible like DNA.

 

Only one supernatural/magic element was in this story: the characters’ immortality.

Yet the film didn’t feel lacking for it. The immortality didn’t seem misplaced in a world without other magic. (Although having learned this was based on a comic, ‘superhero’ might be a better descriptor?)

This comes with a caveat. Whenever Andy saves someone, they, or their descendants, go on to do something great for humanity. So maybe when someone with potential needs helps, a supernatural force pulls Andy into helping them? Or perhaps being saved by an immortal passes on some supernatural-ness to the rescued person? This is only conjecture but, when a coincidence happens in fiction, you can be pretty certain it’s not actually a coincidence.

 

The plot isn’t by any means complex but it’s solid and believable. The characters were well defined and their actions/speech always made sense. (Not that they were easy to predict but no one acted/spoke out of character.) The Old Guard was a fully engrossing watch, something that I’d watch again. Not a bad feat for something I chose for someone else.