As a good rule of thumb, assume that whatever filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood is doing now will become common industry practice within five years. Her films have always served as a beacon of quiet yet radical corrective energy pointing towards a cinema that practices the virtues it so frequently signals. The world is only just now catching up to Prince-Bythewood’s level of discourse around how Black women in culture are turned into sexual props by white boardroom decision-makers in 2014’s “Beyond the Lights.” Her debut feature, “Love & Basketball,” captures subtle gradients of race and gender dynamics in a way that romantic films still struggle to understand two decades later. Even her most color-by-numbers directorial effort, 2008’s “The Secret Life of Bees,” possesses an understanding of the harm a white woman could bring to Black people simply for being in her proximity during the Civil Rights era, good intentions be damned.
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Hopefully, in a few years, someone looking back at Prince-Bythewood’s latest feature, “The Old Guard,” will see her advances in the big-budget adventure flick as quaint. There’s little in the story itself that feels revolutionary or likely to stand the test of time, although that calculus could change if Netflix is able to milk a franchise out of it (as they hint in the film’s construction and conclusion). This narrative surrounding skilled, immortal mercenaries protecting the world from centuries of danger while avoiding detection mixes the underground intrigue of 2008’s “Wanted” with the globetrotting pleasures of a “Mission: Impossible” movie. It sounds familiar on paper, sure. Yet as with most things in life, this movie is all in the execution.
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In 2020, the way Prince-Bythewood is able to seamlessly resolve the genre’s issues with diversity and representation feels like a seismic shock. Any studio executive worth their salt should be taking notes on her approach if they are trying to make their tentpole resemble the culture around them without tokenization or self-congratulation. We’re past the time when Disney can get away with trumpeting a blockbuster having a fleeting “gay moment” as a sign of progress. “The Old Guard” lights the way towards a more effortless incorporation of representation, a world where the bare minimum does not need to drive a news cycle.
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It’s not just that her assembled “Avengers”-style group of eponymous guardians is more than just a gaggle of white people, though having a fuller spectrum of gender, race, nationality and sexual orientation is undeniably a boon for the film. It’s that she’s conscious of making every element of the film less homogenous because this is simply the right thing to do, not because it will score political points. Her depiction of the U.S. Marines, for example, does not lazily uphold the cultural association of the military with white male might – their ranks are full of people of color, and especially women. She doesn’t draw attention to this choice, and it’s all the more powerful because she treats it as ordinary rather extraordinary.
No one is simply on-screen to fulfill a diversity quota or stand-in for an entire underrepresented group. Prince-Bythewood, along with screenwriter Greg Rucka, allows for ample breathing room that lets the characters be people. Everyone in the group gets at least one scene where they can unhurriedly elaborate upon an unexpected way in which an extended lifespan has sept into their psyche. And not just to move the plot, either – simply because they are interested in what they have to say about life. Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicolo (Luca Marinelli) get to tell their story about how they fought on opposite sides of the Crusades only to eventually fall madly in love with each other and end up on the same side for centuries to come. It’s among the most unique, unconventional gay love stories yet seen in cinema, and how wonderful that the filmmakers give it depth and dimensionality. Elsewhere, Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) gets tearily vulnerable as he describes the emotional cost of loving people who can never understand his condition, and the group’s ringleader Andy (Charlize Theron) lets the shame of losing a teammate to eternal punishment weigh on her conscience like a backpack full of bricks.
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While it’s a nice relief that Prince-Bythewood does not hurry these emotional beats, their richness cannot fully compensate for the rest of the formulaic film. “The Old Guard” immerses the audience in the world of these mercenaries by way of inducting a new member who shows signs of being similarly unable to die, Nile (KiKi Layne). Her introduction to the group comes by way of clunky scenes of exposition dumping that could make Christopher Nolan blush, and these plot-advancing passages outnumber the character-driven ones by a good amount. Though necessary to give the film some stakes, bits involving pharma exec Merrick (Harry Melling) who wants to mine the group’s immortality for his own profit – and the henchman Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who unwittingly does his bidding – add little tension or excitement into the mix.
At least the film’s action sequences are somewhat better constructed. For starters, they are coherent and attention-grabbing, which is apparently a lot to ask for these days. Prince-Bythewood’s camera, as guided by cinematographers Barry Ackroyd and Tami Reiker, is lithe and fluid as it captures the smooth motion of the Old Guard’s combat finesse. The film gets a lot of mileage from Theron’s sword-wielding and overall fighting expertise, though coming after both “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Atomic Blonde,” the pleasures of observing her skills come with some diminishing returns.
The bigger issue in these fight scenes comes from a nagging paradox that gains prominence with each corpse added to the film’s large body count. For a film that devotes so much space to deliberating the meaning of life, even if experienced unusually, why does it relish the sight of death so much? The disposability of the people who stand in the way of the mercenaries feels at odds with the film’s core ideas about the value of life. Perhaps this is a fitting encapsulation of “The Old Guard” itself. Situated at the crossroads of two different styles and ideologies, the film takes the less-trodden path – though not without a few detours into conventionality. [B-]
“The Old Guard” arrives on Netflix on July 10.