THE OLD GUARD

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film starts with four people laying on the ground, riddled with bullets. We hear the voice of Andromache the Scythian/”Andy” (Charlize Theron) saying how tired she is of all this.

Sometime earlier, Andy meets with one of her partners, Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) in Morocco. They join their other partners, Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). The four of them are immortal assassins who have lived for centuries. They are so devoted to staying hidden that Andy must discreetly erase a picture that a group of women took that she is seen in. They are set to meet with an ex-CIA operative, James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who tasks them with catching a militia responsible for terrorizing locals with kidnapping and violence.

The team accepts the mission and is flown to South Sudan. As they gear up and enter the base, they quickly realize they were set up before the militia in question steps out to mow them all down with bullets, leading to the intro scene. The four lay bleeding until their powers allow them to push the bullets out and heal quickly. The militia is surprised but have little time to react further as the team starts killing them, with Andy wielding her axe against the mercs. They spot a camera and figure that Copley had set it up to expose their secret. Andy destroys the camera, and the four escape and resolve to stick together to find Copley.

In Afghanistan, a team of U.S. Marines head into a base to rescue women who are being held captive by a terrorist leader. Nile Freeman (Kiki Layne) leads the team in, and one of the women directs her to the target. Nile and her partners head in and shoot at the target. She tries to stop his bleeding to take him in alive, but he grabs a knife and slashes her throat. Nile’s partner Dizzy (Natacha Karam) goes to tend to her wound as Nile appears to lose consciousness. As this happens, the four assassins experience the same vision of Nile together, realizing that there is another like them that is out there. They change course and head to find her. In the medic tent, Nile’s neck wound has completely healed, to the surprise of Dizzy and the other Marines.

In London, Copley attends a presentation from his employer, Merrick (Harry Melling), who wants to have his company, Merrick Pharmaceuticals, potentially save millions of lives with their innovations. Copley shows Merrick the footage of the assassins after the mission, and while he is impressed, Merrick wants hard physical proof for his experiments.

Nile is alienated by her teammates after the incident, and she is told she is to be sent to Germany for more tests, despite her objections. Before she is taken, Andy intercepts her and knocks out the other soldiers before taking Nile with her. On the drive, Nile tries to escape, and Andy steps out to shoot her in the head. Up until this point, Nile thought she might have been dreaming, but she now realizes that she really cannot die. They make it to an airbase where a pilot takes them to France. After Andy falls asleep, she finds that Nile tied her arm to the plane and is trying to force her and the pilot at gunpoint to land the plane. Andy shoots the pilot and orders Nile to free her so that she can fly the plane, but it turns out to have just been a trick to get free, as the pilot was just playing dead. Andy subdues Nile and forces her to continue going along with their mission.

Andy and Nile arrive at their hideout to meet the other guys. Nile is told what their team does and how their powers work, as well as the fact that they have lived through (and even been involved in) countless historical events. Andy explains that they can eventually die, but they never knew when it could happen or why/how it does, as they lost a fellow immortal warrior centuries earlier after his wounds never healed. At night, Nile wakes up startled after telling the guys she saw a vision of a woman trapped in an iron coffin, screaming and thrashing about. Booker tells her that the woman was a former partner of theirs, Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), who was the first of the immortals that Andy found. They were great friends and partners until they were captured and continuously killed by people who thought they were inhuman. Quynh was forced into the iron coffin and thrown into the sea, where she remained trapped for 500 years, doomed to continue drowning with no chance of escape, and Nile was able to feel all of her pain.

Later on, the hideout is attacked by some mercs working for Merrick. Booker is incapacitated with a grenade, and his wounds take longer to heal, while Joe and Nicky are captured. Andy finds some of the men and kills them before she escapes with Nile and Booker. She is wounded and finds that she is taking longer to heal.

The mercs taunt Joe and Nicky as they try to separate them. When one of them mockingly asks Joe if Nicky is his boyfriend, he gives an impassioned speech about how Nicky is way more than that. They kiss before the goons pull them apart. They are taken to Merrick, where Joe headbutts him. He retaliates by trying to see proof of their immortality by repeatedly stabbing Joe. Merrick has Joe and Nicky taken to the lab while still demanding that the other immortals be found.

Andy, Nile, and Booker stop at an abandoned mine where some of their belongings are. Andy fears that they may be tracked after she was wounded by one of the men back at the hideout. As they plan their next move, Nile continues to have questions about her newfound destiny. She is more reluctant to go along after Booker says that he has already outlived all of his children. Nile thinks about her own mother and brother, and how they had to mourn her father when he was killed in action. Andy goes to a nearby pharmacy to have her wound tended to. Later, as they proceed to carry on their mission, Nile decides to back out and spend whatever time she has left with her family, and Andy lets her go. However, Nile later finds a gun clip in the trunk of the car, realizing Booker intentionally gave Andy an empty gun.

Andy and Booker track down Copley and move in to get him, but Booker reveals his alliance with Copley and shoots Andy in the back. He justifies his betrayal by saying that Merrick may have found a way to end their immortality so that they can die peacefully. Booker then notices that Andy is still not healing as quick as she was. Merrick has his men take her and Booker to join Joe and Nicky, fully intent on potentially killing them all if it means he has found his breakthrough. After Joe and Nicky find out about Booker’s deception, they turn on him as well.

Nile finds Copley and forces him to help her rescue the others, but he is more than willing after seeing what kind of man Merrick really is. Copley had been gathering information on the exploits and heroics that the immortals have performed throughout the centuries. They make it to Merrick’s building and kill his men before freeing the immortals. Instead of leaving, Andy opts to stop Merrick then and there to prevent him from hunting them any further. After killing another slew of mercenaries, Merrick finds Andy and Nile. After he attacks, Andy jams her axe into his neck, and as he tries to shoot her, Nile tackles him out the window and they both land on a car. Nile heals up while Merrick is a dead bloody mess. The team then leaves together, and Andy’s wounds eventually heal.

Copley helps set up Nile’s situation as being killed in action, meaning her family will have to mourn her as they did her father. Meanwhile, the other immortals force Booker into a century-long exile for his betrayal, and he bids them farewell. The others decide to continue working with Copley as long as he can help them stay hidden.

Six months later, Booker drunkenly returns to his apartment in Paris. He is greeted by a very unexpected visitor: Quynh.

A team of immortal assassins - Andy, Booker, Joe, and Nicky - have scoured the globe for centuries, committing heroic acts while staying hidden. After they are set up in a mission to expose their immortality, the team goes to hide and find their employer, Copley, while discovering that a young Marine, Nile, is also an immortal. She has discovered her abilities after surviving an attack in Afghanistan.

Andy finds Nile and takes her away to bring her along on their mission. Although reluctant at first, Nile comes to understand how the immortals work, but finds that they can still die eventually and that Andy had lost a former friend and immortal, Quynh, after she was doomed to be trapped underwater in an iron coffin.

Copley works for Merrick, a big pharma CEO who wants to use the team's immortality to supposedly save millions of lives, but he really only cares for the personal benefits. His men capture Joe and Nicky, and the other three head off to find them. Nile wants to leave and spend the rest of her days with her family, but returns to help after realizing Booker had set Andy up. Sure enough, Booker was working with Copley and Merrick to try and find a way to end their immortality since he was tired of outliving people he cared for.

Nile gets Copley to help rescue the immortals. After killing Merrick's men, Andy and Nile fight Merrick and send him out a window to his death. The team escapes, but Booker is forced into a century-long exile for his deception. The others continue to work with Copley as long as he helps them stay hidden.

Booker later discovers Quynh - somehow having escaped her confinement - in his apartment.