Take a little journey with me back five years ago. COVID lockdowns made being a film critic harder than usual (many other things). And out from the isolation of our living rooms came this little Netflix movie called “The Old Guard.”
Holy cow, was I enchanted. I am such a sucker for movies about immortals fighting through history from “Highlander” to vampire flicks. I loved it, and it came out of nowhere to be a fantastic action treat.
The movie caught enough attention that Netflix greenlit a sequel pretty quickly, and then. . . we had to wait five years for it to materialize. Very hush hush. Little news. Even Charlize Theron, our lead heroine, seemed confused by the delay.
Well, Netflix finally delivered, following up the original with a sequel that offers more lore for the immortals and some questionable edits and rougher fight choreography.
How much viewers enjoy “The Old Guard 2” will depend entirely on how much they loved the first one. It is a noticeable downgrade in some areas. But at the same time, we’re given some pretty cool backstory on the immortal warriors out to safeguard humanity from the shadows.
On the positive side, Theron returns as Andy, the weary warrior who has lost her immortality. She’s still kicking tail and brings a solid performance to the film, grounding us all in her tragic loss and seemingly endless war against threats to humanity. Even though “The Old Guard 2” opens with some curious editing choices during a raid on a weapons smuggler, the film picks itself up, and it’s still fun to watch her swing the axe around. Theron looks great doing it, too. (Call me crazy. But they found a way to make her look even more gay as she waits for her immortal ex-lover to reappear.)
And speaking of Theron’s ex-girlfriend, Vân Veronica Ngô enters this movie as Quỳnh, an immortal who has been trapped at the bottom of the sea for hundreds of years. She strolls right into the film and immediately gives everyone a very grounded and vengeful history as she felt abandoned by Andy.
When the story focuses on Andy and Quỳnh, it’s solid. Even Andy’s connection with the newest immortal Nile (KiKi Layne) feels fun to watch. Nile is given the most expansive lore courtesy of screenwriter Greg Rucka. That story is one of this movie’s biggest selling points among the centuries of torment these immortals endure.
It’s when the movie widens in scope, trying to find uses for previously entertaining friends of Andy that things meander a bit. When you have a team of six immortals and 90 minutes to introduce them all, it can be challenging to individualize them. But somehow, the first film found
a way. It gave us one of the greatest queer love declarations between Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli.
In “The Old Guard 2,” the film doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do with these characters. And that’s before it introduces Henry Golding as Tuah, a secret chronicler of immortal history, as well as Uma Thurman as Discord (seriously?), the OG immortal and villain of this film.
Thurman is utterly wasted in this role when she should be a superstar villain. And yet, she’s given maybe 10 minutes of screen time and very little development for the audience. We don’t know who she is or why she has a vague urge to inflict pain upon humanity.
It was nice to see Netflix utilize more outdoor settings for “The Old Guard 2,” as there aren’t any more COVID lockdowns. But the chosen settings of Paris, Rome, and Indonesia do feel fairly random as far as the story is concerned.
Are audiences going to enjoy “The Old Guard 2” as much as the original movie? That depends entirely on how interested they are in the additional lore and how much of a cliffhanger they’re willing to stomach, as this film ends frustratingly on a point that needs a third film to resolve. That’s ultimately what proves to be such a downgrade for the story.
It left me wondering if we really needed a sequel, if the second movie was just going to require a third to end its narrative properly. How much of this is due to changing directors from Gina Prince-Bythewood to Victoria Mahoney remains unclear. But the differences in film don’t go entirely unnoticed.
