Superhero movie is about ideas — not special effects
“The Old Guard” is not like other superhero movies. It’s not cute, not arch, not sentimental, not suffocated by special effects and not pitched to the mentality of a notsobright 12yearold. It doesn’t feature boring battles in which city streets are demolished. It’s violent, but somber — almost depressed in its aura.
In fact, if you somehow managed to avoid all advance publicity, you might go 10 or 15 minutes without knowing you were watching a superhero movie. It feels more like an action movie about mercenaries, going from assignment to assignment with the tired sense of having seen it all. Except, in this case, they really have seen it all.
“The Old Guard” is directed by Gina PrinceBythewood (“Beyond the Lights”), who has never made a superhero movie before. Most directors in that position just imitate what they think the genre demands, and they end up making garbage. But PrinceBythewood, instead of being intimidated, just made her own movie. She imparts to Greg Rucka’s intelligent script the seriousness it deserves, and the result is the smartest superhero movie since “Captain America: Civil War” — and I like this one better.
The premise is simple, but precise in its detail: There are a handful of people who can’t die. They cannot be killed because they heal from whatever calamity befalls them, usually within seconds or minutes. However, they can be physically stopped and even captured during the vulnerable interval in which their cells regenerate.
They are also, otherwise, normal. They feel pain, and they have no superhuman strength. If they happen to be good fighters, that’s only because they’ve been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Charlize Theron plays Andy, the oldest in the group. The movie resists the temptation to specify just how old she is, but her full name — Andromache — is a clue. She and her three associates spend their lives trying to lie low. In between, they might take on the occasional assignment, but they are not the Avengers. They’re not trying to save the world, because they know from experience that the world is beyond saving. They just want to mind their own business.
Meanwhile, over in the Middle East, an American Marine (KiKi Layne) makes a fatal mistake while subduing an insurgent. She looks away for a moment, and he cuts her throat. Recovery is impossible. She bleeds to death — but then wakes up in a military hospital, as though from a jolly colonoscopy. She doesn’t even have a scar. So now there are five of them.
A particular strength of “The Old Guard” is that, having devised this notion of immortal fighters, it embraces it from all sides. Theron and, in particular, Matthias Schoenaerts, as one of her colleagues, play the loneliness and sadness of the situation. Yes, they get to live forever, but everyone they’ve ever known has died. And the peculiar nature of their condition makes longterm relationships impossible. Even Dick Clark, at a certain point, started looking old. They never do, and after a few decades, it becomes obvious.
Add into the mix the extra threat posed by modern technology. In any other period of history, they could disappear and start new lives. Today, disappearing isn’t easy. Even worse, with one miscalculation on their part, their images could be flashed around the world.
Finally, there’s the moral question: Maybe, just maybe, they should go public. Maybe science has advanced to the point that their genetic invincibility could be replicated and shared. Maybe all the illnesses that afflict humanity could be cured.
Impressively, “The Old Guard” folds all these questions and ideas into a steamroller narrative. Here and there, it takes time to breathe, because a movie should breathe, but it never stops. Along the way, the ideas develop, and there’s even a deftly suggested spiritual dimension, something notably absent from most superhero tales.
“The Old Guard” is enough to give me hope. Right now we’re stuck with these superhero movies. Disliking them generically is as inconvenient as disliking love stories in 1940 or film noir in 1950 — they’re not going away, not for a while. But “The Old Guard” shows that, in the hands of a smart writer and director, something can be made of it that’s worthy of our attention. This genre can grow.
Let’s hope it does.