The Old Guard (2020)

User Review

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  d_riptide

  7 / 10

  As dumb action fluff goes, “The Old Guard” isn’t half bad both in the action department and mostly in the story department as well, which I’m willing to give it a brief pass for since it practically demolished Gemini Man on how to properly introduce an interesting concept and actually succeed at the execution. Unlike that movie that wastes its gimmick with each fight scene that occurs with a rather limited cast, director Gina Prince-Bythewood staged the fight scenes with ripe grittiness, rawness and executionary finesse that don’t broaden out to being too boring or generic while teasing out a certain soulful quality in the cast in order to keep their personalities and characters fresh and interesting despite some of the writing working against that. Stunt work and choreography put more into the believability behind the scenes with the most stuff happening, editing is mostly fine, worldbuilding is actually kind of clever and the performances were nicely handled for what they could’ve done and done better, Charlize Theron being the standout of the main six.⁣
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  Similar to Atomic Blonde however, it doesn’t fully stand on its own as it’s restricted by the very genre conventions it boasts: more specifically the fact that half of the necessary plot elements required to move the story along are rather logy and formulaic, the camerawork causes some scenes to suffer greatly since its stuck to handheld most of the time, music choices ranged from ok to just plain bizarre, the antagonist either wasn’t very convincing nor his motivation and as much as I enjoyed the action sequences (and believe me, I love some good ol’ fashion strategic beat-em-ups), they don’t exactly have the same level of craftsmanship, slickness or even the style that John Wick captured and perfected in later movies. ⁣
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  For a franchise wannabe, this actually does have a better chance of achieving that goal compared to other films that either underperformed, went overboard with the idea or didn’t try hard enough. It pulls me in just enough to want to see how the rest of the story could play out in a continuation in either a sequel or series. But I think a TV series works better.

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