Heartwarming / The Old Guard

• Joe and Nicky are two immortal soldiers who met and died during the Crusades (while not stated in the film, the comic tells us it was the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade). In fact, they met, died, and fell in love during the Crusades (they killed each other a lot). Throughout the movie, they are shown to be sleeping with one arm around the other or saying how much they love one another. When they are captured and Joe asks if Nicky is alright, one of the soldiers mocks him by asking, "What is he, your boyfriend?" Joe looks at the soldier and says the following speech:
  "This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness, and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me even after a millennium. His heart overflows with a kindness of which this world is not worthy. I love this man beyond measure and reason. He's not my boyfriend. He is all, and he is more."
  • And then he and Nicky passionately kiss.
  • Look at Nicky's face during Joe's speech, he looks genuinely touched at the way his lover describes him.
  • Something else to pay attention to. When the guard makes his mocking comment, Nicky just kind of slumps (because this is probably the cherry on top to a really sucky day). Joe actually sees this before he starts to tell of the guards. He's not just defending their relationship with the speech, he's deliberately trying to reassure Nicky with it.
  • Hell, the guards look touched by this speech. For a moment, these Mooks share a look where they appear to be seeing their captives as people, not cargo.
  • Even better: all of this was in the graphic novel and Greg Rucka stipulated with the film contract that the scene had to be in whatever movie was made from the comic.
  • A little tidbit: if you pay close attention to the blocking, Nicky is always in between Joe and any potential threat if he can be (or absolutely enraged if he can't be). This is particularly obvious in the scene where Nile has her nightmare; Joe is sleeping against the wall, with Nicky between him and the rest of the room, and when they snap awake Joe reaches for Nicky and Nicky reaches for a gun before they realize it's just her. He does this even though it's low odds that any harm Joe comes to will actually stick.
  • During the climactic fight to escape the lab, Joe and Nicky get killed or knocked out but wait for each other to come back even though it means getting temporarily separated from the rest of the group and risking being recaptured by Keane. They simply will not leave each other's side.
  • The sheer fact that after a millennium together, they're so deeply in love and clearly just adore each other. Especially given how hard it averts the normal tropes depicting both immortality and long-term relationships as boring, contentious, or simply miserable—Nicky and Joe still get along easily, enjoy each other's company, flirt, sleep cradled in each other's arms, and look forward to their future together.
• The kindness and understanding that all of the older immortals show to Nile:
  • While her relationship with Andy gets off to a rocky start, they soften towards each other fairly quickly, and Andy doesn't blame or judge Nile for deciding to leave the team to be with her family.
  • Andy and Nile's fight is this in a weird way. Andy lets Nile put up as good a fight as she can, but Nile just can't beat a woman with millennia of experience on her. After Andy has proven that Nile is well and truly out of her league, Andy declares the fight done. Nile attacks again, and only then does Andy do real damage, breaking her arm, then repeats that the fight is done. Nile attacks one last time, and Andy breaks her leg. A great show of restraint on Andy's part, letting Nile work through the very complicated emotions and only hurting her when she won't back down, and even then the harm Andy does is as minimal as needs to be. Andy is doing her best to ease Nile into this life after having to yank her into it quickly to get her off the US government's radar.
  • Joe and Nicky both welcome her warmly to the team and do their best to reassure her about her new situation, offering her a more positive outlook on immortality than Andy and Booker do. Even before they meet, Nicky argues that they have to find Nile for no other reason than because she's scared and alone.
  • Booker patiently shows Nile the ropes and answers her questions as best he can. Even when he tells her not to bother reuniting with her family, he's not cynical or judgmental about it—he's just sad, and he wants to protect Nile and her family from that grief. At the end of the movie, Booker's the one Nile goes to for comfort about leaving her old life behind.
  • And then, at the end of the film, their kindness is repaid beautifully when Nile goes on a one-woman charge to rescue them when they've all been captured by Merrick. In particular, she refuses to leave Booker behind, even when he himself thinks he is not worth a rescue.
• The Family of Choice nature of the team:
  • When asked by the hotel clerk at the beginning why he's in Morocco, Booker replies, "Family." In the hotel room, Joe and Nicky both greet Andy with enormous hugs, even though she's only been gone a year.
  • During their limited downtime, they're shown giving each other gifts, indulging in inside jokes, and just hanging out watching TV together.
  • Even after Booker's betrayal, the rest of the team still cares deeply enough about him (and vice versa) that they fight alongside him against Merrick and limit his punishment to one hundred years away from the team, after which he can come back to them. Again: Booker deliberately got them all kidnapped and tortured, and they're still willing to forgive and trust him.
• Nile and Copley showing Andy, Joe, and Nicky how their work has helped humanity countless times over.
• In the final fight after Andy loses her immortality, all four of the others instinctively use their own bodies to shield her from the bullets.