The Old Guard: Review

I literally just finished this film, and when I started the movie, nothing made any sense. I hate when I have this lingering feeling of missing something that hasn’t been presented but I feel like it has been, if that makes any sense. You have to wait until about 20 minutes in for the story to really take shape, in some form.

Here’s the premise: Andy, Nicky, Booker and Joe are all centuries-old mercenaries who are immortal. I’m going to go ahead and spoil this for you all. They do not know what makes them immortal but, as with everything, immortality does not last as long as you would think. Inevitably, someone wants to harvest their “ability” for the “greater good of society and science.” There’s always that one person. SMH.

The movie is a Netflix original and will cost you two hours and four minutes of your life, which isn’t too tragic. However, if you know me and read at least some of this blog, you know I hate a movie that is long for no reason. There are always a couple of scenes that we could have done without or some that could have been shorter. Some of the fight scenes, as great as they were, didn’t really need to be five whole minutes long.

In addition to the fight scenes being long and extravagant, I wish that two hours was spent in telling us more about each character. We got a lot of back story on Andy, Charlize Theron’s character, since she is the oldest and spent so much of her early life as the only one of her kind. We got a glimpse of Booker’s past life but we didn’t get too much from Joe, Nicky and the new girl, Nile. This could be because there may be a sequel to the movie. Side note: Has Netflix done a sequel to one of their movies before?

Let me back track for a quick second. Remember the movie Love & Basketball? What about The Secret Life of Bees? Why am I mentioning these movies? Because the same director of these two films directed this film which was news to me. I heard about this movie but didn’t watch a trailer or look into anything before I watched it which made me appreciate the message in the film that much more. Watch closely and you’ll start to put together the message of the film and they don’t repeat it or beat it into you.

It’s a great watch for the weekend but if I watched it again, there are about 45 minutes I could cut from the film. Other than that, pay attention….

The Old Guard is on Netflix now! Also, Charlize Theron is fine. We all know it. Just needed to reiterate that.