Plot: Andy leads immortal warriors against a powerful enemy threatening their group. They grapple with the resurfacing of a long-lost immortal, complicating their mission to safeguard humanity.
Review: During the COVID-19 lockdown, Netflix’s The Old Guard was the perfect escapist entertainment we all needed. A fresh and fun action movie that brought some new energy to the comic book genre, The Old Guard was a nice counter to the typical Marvel and DC fare. Five years later, the long-awaited sequel is finally here, and it brings the showdown between Charlize Theron and Uma Thurman, which we never knew we wanted. The Old Guard 2 deepens the mythology from writer Greg Rucka’s comic books while setting up more sequels. The problem is that The Old Guard 2 is not as strong as the first film. Overstuffed with characters and narratives that do not connect organically, this is a mediocre follow-up to one of the better comic book movies of the last decade.
In The Old Guard, we met Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), or Andy as she is now known, who is an immortal warrior leading a team of fellow immortals on mercenary missions. Able to sense the presence of other immortals, Andy recruits recently killed U.S. Marine Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne) to their squad. Facing off with a villainous pharmaceutical executive, the team teaches Nile about the limits of their regeneration and their quest to find Andy’s friend, Quynh (Vân Veronica Ngô), who was banished to the deep sea in an iron maiden for being a witch. Andy was left mortal at the end of the first film, and we were teased with Quynh visiting Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts). The Old Guard 2 opens with Quynh being freed by Discord (Uma Thurman), the oldest of the immortals, who plans revenge on her kind and all of humanity. Thus begins what is designed to be an epic battle between Andy and her team of heroes versus Quynh and Discord.
The weakest part of the first film was the lack of a villain on par with the immortal heroes. Harry Melling played Merrick as a mustache-twirling baddie, but he never had the presence or abilities to serve as a worthy opponent to Andy. The Old Guard 2 aligns Andy’s team with their foe-turned-CIA-ally James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the sage-like wisdom of immortal scholar Tuah (Henry Golding), giving the squad two antagonists to battle who share the same regenerative abilities. At the core, the dynamic between Andy and Quynh is strong enough to anchor the narrative thanks to the rift between the longtime friends. There are hints and teases that Andy and Quynh may have been lovers. Still, it is oddly never addressed, even though Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) were openly presented as a couple in the first film. Charlize Theron and Vân Veronica Ngô play Andy and Quynh as more than just pals, but it feels weirdly unspoken not to address it. The chemistry between the two drives their scenes together and boosts their fight scenes.
The same cannot be said about Uma Thurman’s Discord. Sharing minimal scenes with Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman’s character is a thinly written villain whose presence feels added late into the film’s plot. Most of Thurman’s scenes are shared with KiKi Layne as Discord and Nile have a connection that is key to the existence of immortals in this universe. Thurman spends most of her time walking and talking rather than fighting, a bait-and-switch for those waiting to see the Kill Bill star again wielding a sword on screen. Thurman and Theron only share about ten minutes of screen time, and their fight, which was meant to be an epic sequence, feels overly choreographed and underwhelming. The Old Guard 2 runs lean, clocking in at about 100 minutes, but none of the fights have the same intensity as the first movie. While including a plot twist tied to their immortality is meant to increase the stakes, it has the opposite impact.
The first movie was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who was unexpectedly skilled at showcasing action and went on to direct the 2022 film The Woman King, another female-led action film. The Old Guard 2 tried to catch lightning in a bottle again with an unexpected director in Victoria Mahoney. Making only her second film after the 2011 drama Yelling to the Sky, Mahoney has worked for over a decade directing television series like Grey’s Anatomy, You, and Suits LA. The Old Guard 2 was filmed in Italy and the United Kingdom, and Mahoney makes good use of the European locals, but the more intricate action sequences are blatantly green screen and CGI-heavy. The screenplay, once again written by Greg Rucka alongside Sarah Walker, does a decent job of expanding the mythology from the comic book but fails to bring the competing storylines together satisfactorily. Couple that with rote and familiar fight sequences, and The Old Guard 2 feels underwhelming.
With a cliffhanger ending designed to set up a pretty much guaranteed third film in the franchise, The Old Guard 2 is left to serve as a bridge between the solid first film and what will likely be the trilogy-capping next entry. As it stands, I am still intrigued by the rules and structure of The Old Guard immortals and where they came from, but The Old Guard 2 struggles to do anything with the source material. Maybe things would have turned out differently had Prince-Bythewood returned to helm this film, but it just does not work as well as it should. If you enjoyed The Old Guard, you will likely feel that this sequel is just more of the same. I would love to see where the next film could take things, but another director should take the reins to bring this franchise back to where it should be.
The Old Guard 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
Source:
JoBlo.com
