So I won't write a bad review, for the benefit of the one other person I know who liked The Old Guard. I can't say whether I did or didn't like it, but if I were to have not liked it, I would have described the film to be a plodding, dull, slightly too long action movie with the lowest of stakes and utterly unsympathetic characters.
The premise of Old Guard is that there is an ancient, secret squad of immortal mercenaries. They have super healing powers that lets them recover from hails of gunfire, and now there is an evil group that is on to them. The villains, led by a corporate weasel who literally describes himself as "big pharma", figures that the squad's bodies hold the secret to many life saving drugs, and so he wants to kidnap them for experimentation.
I was puzzled by the opening scene, where the squad gets shot to pieces. In the movie, its there to show us their rapid healing powers and allow a cool action fight with guns and swords. But it makes no sense from a story standpoint because the villains go to all this trouble of setting up the ambush, apparently without informing their henchmen of the group's super powers, or even instructing them to handcuff and capture the seemingly dead group, the moment they are all shot to the ground. I guess that movie would have been over in five minutes.
The biggest issue of the movie to me is that the "old guard" are tired of constantly killing people and not helping the greater good, but the solutionis dangling in front of their face; they simply agree to help Big Pharma - or medical science at large - and produce a lot of life saving drugs for millions of people. The only justification for not already doing this is some hogwash about how the old guard were treated as witches a few hundred years ago; apparently they haven't noticed any change in society
"But what about the cool action scenes?!" my wife reminds me. Yes dear, they were shot okay, but I got bored of seeing immortal people killing hoards of faceless soldiers with impunity. Calling it a curb stomp battle is an understatement; getting the heroes to literally stomp a line of empty beer cans would literally be a bigger challenge to them, and about as exciting.
It might help if you are already a Charlize Theron fan, but plenty of people seem to like this film. Meanwhile, I would only recommend trying The Old Guard if you are especially interested and can see it for free on Netflix.
My Wife Said Don't Write a Bad Review
So I won't write a bad review, for the benefit of the one other person I know who liked The Old Guard. I can't say whether I did or didn't like it, but if I were to have not liked it, I would have described the film to be a plodding, dull, slightly too long action movie with the lowest of stakes and utterly unsympathetic characters.
The premise of Old Guard is that there is an ancient, secret squad of immortal mercenaries. They have super healing powers that lets them recover from hails of gunfire, and now there is an evil group that is on to them. The villains, led by a corporate weasel who literally describes himself as "big pharma", figures that the squad's bodies hold the secret to many life saving drugs, and so he wants to kidnap them for experimentation.
I was puzzled by the opening scene, where the squad gets shot to pieces. In the movie, its there to show us their rapid healing powers and allow a cool action fight with guns and swords. But it makes no sense from a story standpoint because the villains go to all this trouble of setting up the ambush, apparently without informing their henchmen of the group's super powers, or even instructing them to handcuff and capture the seemingly dead group, the moment they are all shot to the ground. I guess that movie would have been over in five minutes.
The biggest issue of the movie to me is that the "old guard" are tired of constantly killing people and not helping the greater good, but the solutionis dangling in front of their face; they simply agree to help Big Pharma - or medical science at large - and produce a lot of life saving drugs for millions of people. The only justification for not already doing this is some hogwash about how the old guard were treated as witches a few hundred years ago; apparently they haven't noticed any change in society
"But what about the cool action scenes?!" my wife reminds me. Yes dear, they were shot okay, but I got bored of seeing immortal people killing hoards of faceless soldiers with impunity. Calling it a curb stomp battle is an understatement; getting the heroes to literally stomp a line of empty beer cans would literally be a bigger challenge to them, and about as exciting.
It might help if you are already a Charlize Theron fan, but plenty of people seem to like this film. Meanwhile, I would only recommend trying The Old Guard if you are especially interested and can see it for free on Netflix.