The Old Guard Review (Premieres July 10 on Netflix)

by Fanboy SEO · Published July 8, 2020 · Updated July 8, 2020

Netflix has finally lifted the embargo for Netflix’s The Old Guard so with that being said, here’s my The Old Guard review which is top-billed by Charlize Theron. It also stars KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Chiwetel Ejiofor,Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli. The film was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and based on the limited series by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez from Image Comics.

In four sentences here’s what The Old Guard is:

Its a bunch of immortals who are now modern day mercenaries who get betrayed by their client to a greedy corporation that wants to replicate their immortality. On top of that the four of them need to recover and convince a new immortal named Nile to join them before greedy pharma get their hands on her.

So what do I think about this new Netflix exclusive film?

Well for starters gotta hand it to the production team for making this series looked cooler than what I expected led by Charlize Theron. They managed to get the good stuff from the source material, a story written by Greg Rucka.

Those action scenes, especially the one in Sudan was good but could have been better. The climax suffered badly in my opinion. Happy to say that there’s very minimal shaky camera effects in this Netflix exclusive film. That means my enthusiasm is piqued because I don’t have to deal with too much movement.

In terms of casting, they really did a good one with casting Theron as Andy, the leader of this Immortal squad of warriors and killers. Throughout the film the words “cool” and “badass” keep ringing especially when Andy goes on a rampage with a variety of weapons. I swear it’s Atomic Blonde all over again.

Then there’s Chiwetel Ejiofor who plays Copley. Their contractor/ client who switches sides more than a pro-wrestler on a good push. He has a strong moment towards the end of the film which kinda gives him some redemption.

The rest are just OK for me. Newcomer Kiki Layne shows a lot of potential.

The Old Guard official poster

The story is pretty straightforward to be honest. There are some fresh stuff they added here in The Old Guard including a more serious flashback and some “meta” and woke stuff. I like my woke and meta stuff in movies but it has to draw a line somewhere. For the Old Guard, it’s more on the average for me.

What’s tiring in terms of story is how it’s so easy to predict who does who and what does what. Like first ten minutes of the film and you’ll be able to guess which one is the baddie and which ones are expendable… Well not really expendable but you get the idea.

They also love to turn key scenes into something from a music video. There was this scene where Theron’s Andy sneaks up on a bunch of armed men and as she begins to turn them into dead men, there’s a song that’s attuned to the action. I’m too old for this stuff and it doesn’t impress me like it did before but yeah, something to look forward to if you’re into that sort of approach.

One additional plus point for me is that they added Harry Melling aka Dudley Dursley as pharma CEO Merrick. So we already hate him in Harry Potter and we even hate him more in this one. Not to mention make up and costume made him so punchable that you actually wait for the film’s climax just to see how things end for this guy. That’s messed up but in a good way.

And because Netflix loves their music, I’m interested in checking out the soundtrack for the film; here’s a giveaway, they have a Frank Ocean song in here so they should have a good collection of songs.