You want an action movie? Then this is the one that you're waiting for. The Old Guard starring Charlize Theron as Andy.
She leads a group of immortal mercenaries for centuries. Trying to keep their identities secret so they can course through time unnoticed until someone was keeping tabs of them.
A former CIA operative, Copley (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) was quietly tracking them down. His wife died of an illness that he believes Andy's band of immortals may provide a cure for mankind. He submits his findings to a pharmaceutical company headed by Steven Merrick (played by Harry Melling) who took an interest on their immortal qualities.
Unknown to the all, Andy was experiencing some changes in her healing powers. What was supposed she has fast healing powers, she learns that she's not healing as fast as she used to be. All this time, they experienced another immortal coming into being in Nile Freeman (played by Kiki Layne) a US Marine who was stationed in Afghanistan.
In their efforts to remain anonymous, Andy instructs his team to track down Copley while she in turn will meet up with Nile. Hoping she can get to her and protect her from Copley. Nile when she was awakened, she was confused why she was still alive and fortunate for her, Andy was there to fill her in.
When Andy and Nile finally met with the team, Copley was able to capture most of them. Its just Andy, Booker and Nile was able to escape but Nile decided to leave them to be with her family. Its now up to Andy and Booker (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) to catch up with Copley and save their team members.
Booker turned out to be a traitor as he was instrumental in the capture of the team, when he injures Andy in Copley's house. Booker and Copley then learns that Andy already lost her healing powers. This lead Copley to have second thoughts about the powers of immortality and how it would contribute to mankind the powers of eradicating illnesses.
Meanwhile Nile had a change in heart and went back to Copley's place only to find Copley alone. He eventually helped Nile on a one woman mission to save the team from the testing being done by Merrick's staff.
In the end, Andy's team was saved and Booker was ostracized from the team for 100 years as punishment for his betrayal. Copley then proceeds to keep their identities secret and persuades them to continue with their missions. What seemingly the missions were mostly small for them, turned out that these had huge impacts in the course of history of mankind.
For us the movie was entertaining and fun to watch as we haven't read the comics. As per our research after watching it, they changed a lot of things just to adapt this to the movie. If we read it first, we will have a different review for this. Luckily it was the other way around. We loved the movie although we can't help see Theron's character in Aeon Flux here with the short hair and mesmerizing stunts she did herein.
The rest of the cast gave solid performances as well so kudos to them for making this an enjoyable film to watch. The story line likewise was great and although we feel like we were watching a glorified pilot episode. There were some scenes that we felt like we were being set up for a sequel. When Andy was mentioning about his BFF in Quynh (played by Van Veronica Ngo), this was repeated and we were wondering if she was going to appear midway in the film. It was almost nearing end and still she hasn't appeared, until when she appeared in the end then we really confirmed that there was a sequel.
The premise of the movie was of the Highlander, although they don't chop their heads off to kill one. The action scenes were fast like Jason Bourne and Aeon Flux but a tad shy short of John Wick. A great set up movie for a franchise and had a powerhouse cast, but the overall feeling again is its a great TV pilot. This would have been a great Netflix Series as the story is rich and compelling and it had already had the cliffhanger in the end with Quynh acting as the nemesis to our heroine in Andy.
Showing currently in Netflix and we hope they follow this one up soon.
