Movie Review: The Old Guard

This was movie #14/20 (#28 overall) that I watched for my 20 for 2020 challenge. This was released on Netflix on July 20, 2020. Below is a spoiler-free review.

I really did not like this movie. The movie had way too many cringey, action movie one-liners. Almost every move they made was pretty predictable. I feel like the narrative babies the audience. I felt like everything was being over-explained to me, and my hand was being held the whole time. There was no respect there for me to be able to uncover anything myself. I also thought the movie was pretty boring the entire way through. I really had to push myself to finish it.

I think it’s a cool concept--a group of heroes that are immortal that have been fighting on the side of justice for millennia. There’s an inherent problem with this story though. Because they are immortal, this eliminates any possibility of drama or emotion in any of the fight scenes or conflicts of the movie. The whole movie is extremely low stakes since we know they’re going to be okay in the end, so what’s the point? And the fact that they were so old was just told in a way that was so annoying to me. This is how all the dialogue went for me:

“We met in the 60s.”

“You mean the 1960s?”

“No… (side-eyes and chuckles as they laugh at the naivete of the new recruit) the 1860s.”

The whole movie was just filled with these lines where the only point of the joke or the conversation is “wow look how wise/cool we are.” Which all came off as incredibly cringey to me.

I do think that the story ended on an interesting cliffhanger. I liked one of the twists near the end. I also appreciated that there was decent representation of actors featured in the film. Another pro for me is that I didn’t have any problems with the actor’s performances in the movie.

I really didn’t like this movie at all. I’d give this movie a 2/10. Have you seen this movie? Let me know your thoughts down below!