The Old Guard bring a fresh feel to superhero movies

Living forever is all very well but what would you talk about? That’s one of the more interesting questions posed by The Old Guard, a superhero movie from Netflix which is a cut above most in the genre.

There are hints of Gilgamesh, the first superhero, in this story of four immortals who have been together for years. These eternal warriors travel the world doing good, helping the less fortunate, saving the oppressed, but always below the radar.

Andromache (Charlize Theron) and her companions take sensible precautions. They never allow themselves to be seen, or photographed, and they never go back to the same place twice. The one time they allow themselves to break their rules there are consequences.

They are being hunted by big pharma in the shape of nasty genius Merrick (Harry Melling). He is only interested in monetising immortality which means capturing them and essentially vivisecting them for ever. Incidentally, they can’t die but they do feel pain making this a less than pleasant prospect.

The sensible thing to do would be to lie low and wait it out – unlike them Merrick won’t live forever. But a new immortal has emerged, Nile (Kiki Layne), who needs to be protected and brought into the group which means they need to go back out into the world and risk capture themselves.

Based on the comic book by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez, The Old Guard is more thoughtful than we have come to expect from a superhero movie.  

There’s not a lot of dialogue they’ve pretty well said all they need. The most recent recruit Booker (Matthias Schoenerts) joined in the Napoleonic wars, while the other two members Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and Joe (Marwan Kenzari) were on opposing sides in the Crusades. Their big excitement is a guessing game with Charlize Theron and baklava – it’s better than it sounds, trust me.

That gives the story an interesting dynamic; more than most action movies this is about a group dynamic moving as a well-oiled machine. There is no fake heroism or macho posturing; they know what they are doing and why they are driven to do it.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood does a terrific job of telling this story. Her previous films such as Love and Basketball (2000) and The Secret Life of Bees (2008) all feature characters with rich interior lives. None of that has been left behind just because they have superpowers. This is the first superhero movie I can think of in a long time where you have a real sense of who these people are. There is as much effort in the baklava sequence, for example, as there is in an action set piece.

The action scenes incidentally are superbly staged. Rather like Patty Jenkins’s handling of the Amazon warriors in Wonder Woman (2017), there is an emphasis on the aesthetics of combat rather than the brutality. The action is no less exhilarating but the tendency to shoot the characters in full figure brings an elegance to the proceedings. I shudder to think what these scenes would have been like handled by Zack Snyder or Michael Bay for example.

Like almost all Netflix movies The Old Guard is a shade on the long side, but it is still a thrilling an exciting story, very well told. The ending also sets things up very nicely and I suspect it won’t be too long before we see them all again.

Greyhound is built for speed

Greyhound is an old-fashioned movie and I mean that in the best sense of the term. In another lifetime it might have been an MGM movie turned out in the early Fifties with maybe Robert Taylor or Robert Montgomery in the leading role. Instead there is Tom Hanks, the closest thing we have to an old school movie star, doing sterling service to a script which he co-wrote.

The film is based on the novel, The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester, and it focuses on one of the less heralded parts of the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic. Millions of tonnes of food, weapons, and supplies came to Britain across the Atlantic in convoys of merchant ships as a vital lifeline in 1942. Thousands of sailors lost their lives in the process.

Vital air cover was provided by the RAF at the British end and the US Air Force at the other end. Their range was limited however and the bit in the middle – known as ‘The Pit’ – left the convoy entirely at the mercy of packs of German U-boats who preyed on the slow-moving merchantmen.

Their only defence was a thin screen of British and American warships to protect from the undersea threat. One of these is the destroyer code named Greyhound, skippered by Captain Krause (Tom Hanks) whose job it is to lead the convoy through the hellscape of the Pit.

Greyhound is a classic ticking clock scenario. It takes 50 hours to traverse this deadly stretch of ocean and the film is segmented into four-hour watches with the clock ticking down relentlessly until the point when they come under the protective umbrella of air cover again.

The film is merciless in its pacing. There is a brief introduction in which Krause’s personal stakes are established and then we are straight into it. The film runs for 91 minutes – less if you discount the credits – and the pace is brutal.

There is no respite for these men and director Aaron Schneider ratchets the tension constantly in a very well-organised film. There is no sense of who these men are, there is no time spent on characterisation, but I didn’t mind that. I wasn’t too bothered about their backstories, but I was extremely bothered about whether they would make it alive.

The only one we know a little about is Krause. We know that he is a devoutly religious man – a trait lifted straight from the novel – and this means the film becomes a masterclass in minimalism from the unusually terse Hanks. He brings a moral dimension to the character which is not normally seen in such films; when his crew cheers 50 dead Germans, Krause quietly muses on 50 dead souls. I can’t think of a contemporary actor other than Hanks who could have carried this off.

Hanks is a World War Two buff – he was the producer of Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010) and the appeal of the citizen soldier is obviously a strong one. Krause is another in the same mould as Damian Lewis’s Dick Winters in Band of Brothers, or indeed Hanks’ own Captain John Millar in Saving Private Ryan (1998). The sense of taking up arms as a civic duty plainly resonates with Hanks and it informs Krause.

We know from that brief scene at the start that he is a career officer who is now being given a chance to see active service after Pearl Harbor. He is not a conscript; this is what he dedicated his life to and there are few better at portraying the nobility of service than Hanks.

The action is non-stop and the computer effects are very good on the small screen to the point where they make you pine to see this on a big screen, but in the end it is the quiet humanity of Tom Hanks that stayed with me when Greyhound had run its race.

Hamilton does not miss its shot

Watching Hamilton live on stage is probably the single most rewarding theatrical experience of my life. Seated two rows from the front in the Victoria Palace theatre it was an absorbing, stirring, moving experience.

Watching Hamilton on Disney + is not the same but it remains a remarkable cultural experience. This recording of an original Broadway cast performance from 2016 is a powerful piece of work and now it is available to a much wider audience via the streaming platform.

Hamilton is the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s Founding Fathers and the first Secretary of the Treasury, effectively the founder of the US economic system. It’s a show that attempts to answer one question:

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore
And a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot
In the Caribbean by providence impoverished
In squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?

The central tension is between Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr). There is a Mozart/Salieri vibe to their relationship as Burr, the coming man, is overtaken by the young tyro coming up on the inside. This dynamic fuels the whole  story.

Whether live or on-screen Hamilton is a masterpiece. For me one of the definitions of genius is that the form is never the same afterwards and that is certainly true here. But one other hallmark of genius is the way it speaks to individual audiences regardless of time or place.

George Washington’s comment to Alexander Hamilton: ‘Dying is easy, living is harder’ was a good line in 2015 but it has a much more powerful resonance now. That for me is the genius of Hamilton.

The book, the music, and the staging are all impeccable and the show has the awards to prove it. What is remarkable for me is how the filming has brought it to life and given it a fresh dimension. In a lot of filmed stage shows the camera is a nuisance and the performers are often unsure of where to pitch their performance. Not here.

Thomas Kail, who directed the stage production as well as the film, never allows the camera to intrude, instead it illuminates. The general point of view is that of someone in a good seat in the stalls but there are about half a dozen sequences that have been restaged to give more emotional heft.

Kail does two clever things. The first is that he doesn’t go in for flashy cinematography; for the most part the camera only pushes in for medium close ups which preserves the basic theatricality. The second is that he retains the stage spacing for these staged sequences which allows the cast to maintain their original performances.

The bonus is in what these small cinematic interludes provide. We see the sweat glistening on Christopher Jackson’s stubbly head in One Last Time, the spittle-flecked spite of King George in You’ll be Back, and the sheer majesty of Renee Elise Goldsberry’s singing throughout. All of these are enriched by the filming process and makes it more than just filmed theatre.

The one surprise for me is the genius behind this work of genius. Lin-Manuel Miranda does not have the most remarkable of voices nor is he the most charismatic of actors. However, this is a performance unlike anything we have seen; this is a man who knows every note, line, and gesture of the show. The consequence is that he does not perform in the show so much as owns it. This is authorship at its finest and Miranda strides through the show with a performance littered with grace notes of which only he is capable.

Already there are strong suggestions that Hamilton, which was originally destined for a theatrical release, should be an Oscar frontrunner. A lot depends on the position that the Academy takes on the eligibility of streaming releases. Even if they give it the nod, I’m not sure that it is original enough to qualify as Best Picture. But Best Documentary would be a whole other discussion.