Netflix is fast building a reputation for disposable action films. The Old Guard does little to push back on this idea. Charlize Theron and her cohorts are immortal soldiers that have been living and fighting for centuries. They're all a bit sad and jaded at this point, right in line with every modern day vampire tale. The films central conflict revolves around an ambitious pharma bro (Harry Melling) who channels a little bit of Martin Schkreli's weasel-like energy into the role. He's dead set on capturing these immortals to discover a cure for aging and make tons of money doing it. This of course involves kidnapping and torturing them so the group is pretty well opposed to the idea.
Now, the film's premise and character's aren't really noteworthy but the film does standout in its action sequences. They're well placed throughout the film and always attention getters when they do occur. The choreography is crisp and while it feels a little less grounded than other recent offerings like Extraction and the John Wick series, it employs an entertaining enough mix of acrobatics and gun-fu to keep you thoroughly engaged throughout.
The characters are the biggest stumble in this offering by a wide margin. They're not inherently bad characters, nor are the actors playing them giving poor performances, they're just all, without exception, incredibly underwritten. Charlize Theron is Andromache of Scythia or Andy for short. A warrior for seemingly at least two thousand years, though Andy never does say. Her companions are Joe and Nicky, warriors from the crusades who killed each other and then fell in love and Booker, the youngest, a soldier in Napoleon's army. That's an insane amount of history and warfare that could add to these character's, give them texture and unique insights and abilities. Sadly the film does none of that, aside from the odd vague reference to some event or era we learn very little about the character's lives prior to the events of the film and while they do work together extraordinarily well there is nothing about any of their styles that really distinguishes them.
In terms of using the history there are two major exceptions and both of them serve to overtly prime Andy's character arc in exceedingly overt and clumsy ways. One of the two is even used to sequel bait at the end of the film which was just embarrassing. Instead of giving us more meaningful history for these characters or bothering to set up a consistent and believable group dynamic the film just moves forward with the kidnapping plot being largely acted upon them moving the characters forward without them really having to do or interact much. Less than a third of the way through we're introduced to a fifth immortal, a new one who gets scooped up by the group insanely quickly given how busy they are with their own problems. This character serves as the fish out of water so that exposition can be delivered halfway convincingly to the audience. Nile is considerably more lively than the other immortal's given her lack of disillusionment with living, and is given a little bit more characterization to make us feel for her situation. Ultimately though, even she succumbs to the plots need to keep pressing forward regardless of whether it's made us care about what happens yet. The way the script just blurts out every character's primary motivation in usually a single contained scene, after they've already done the action they're now explaining the motivation for is as ass backwards as it is common place in the world of mediocre films. Despite Charlize Theron being a great actress and a charismatic one, even she can't do much other than stare pensively off screen if they don't give her much to do or say outside of killing bad guys.
The plot itself isn't bad, it's hardly novel but it would work just fine if they made us care about the characters. Instead we get the faintest impression of these people before being asked to root for them, only at the end of the film do we get any sense of the weight of their lives at all and even that is delivered as inelegantly as every other piece of exposition in the film, it might as well have been a PowerPoint presentation.
Overall the films failing's while numerous aren't so severe as to mar the enjoyment of the gun fights and the plot and characters are coherent enough to follow if you're even half paying attention, it's just thoroughly forgettable and disposable fare.
6/10 The kind of movie you can have a real conversation over while pausing to watch the action scenes with your friends.