One of the biggest early hits of the pandemic was Netflix’s 2020 film The Old Guard, based on the graphic novel by writer Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernandez. Charlize Theron stars as the leader of a team of immortal warriors whose mission is to protect the world—no big deal. For some reason, it’s taken five years to make the sequel—cleverly titled The Old Guard 2—and these fierce fighters have a renewed purpose, even though Theron’s Andromache (Andy, for short) has lost her immortality for reasons she doesn’t quite understand. But given that she's the oldest of her kind, she figures it’s just old age, since she’s 6000-plus years old.
Still with her on the fight to protect humanity are her latest recruit (and some believe the last immortal), Nile (KiKi Layne); the dynamic couple Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli); and Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the non-immortal former CIA operative who identified the Old Guard in the previous film by tracking them through history and is now fighting by their side. During the course of this film, they even find a way to bring back the self-exiled Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who betrayed the team in the last film. Additionally, the team enlists the help of an old friend of Andy’s named Tuah (Henry Golding), who may provide the key to solving the mystery behind the immortals themselves.
The film opens with Andy’s former love interest, Quynh (Veronica Ngô), being freed from her watery prison by a mysterious character named Discord (Uma Thurman), who has been working toward the goal of pitting these two former partners against each other for reasons I won’t spoil here. But like nearly every damn scene in this movie, nothing is simple and everything comes with a backstory that we have to trudge through to get to the fairly generic action sequences. Sure, there are ancient weapons (ornate axes, swords, etc.) that look cool on camera, but the fights themselves come off as slow and basic martial arts that don’t have a visually compelling component.
But the bigger thing missing from The Old Guard 2 is The Old Guard director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who understood the assignment and got me fascinated with these characters, their mission, and their very existence. Instead, we get director Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the Sky, and many television series), who never allows the film to build up any steam—either as an action movie or an emotional character study of the handful of very damaged people at the center of it. Anytime a halfway decent fight scene begins, it gets cut short by flashbacks or excessive exposition and kills the vibe. There are exceptions to this, but it happens frequently enough that it’s noticeable and kills any potential momentum the movie might have.
We also discover something about Nile potentially being the last of the immortals and the powers that fact gives her that the rest don’t have, and instead of having a pay off to that twist by the end of The Old Guard 2, the filmmakers use it to set up a third film. And while I love a good cliffhanger, this movie feels more like they ran out of time and/or money and simply gave up wrapping up the story properly. Of course, Theron is a captivating presence in any film, as are Lane and Thurman, who doesn’t get nearly the screen time she deserves (but probably will, if there’s a third chapter). But the promise of something better isn’t enough of a foundation to build any movie upon, let alone a sequel to an decent actioner from five years ago. This one was frustrating and ultimately disappointing.
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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