Directed by Victoria Mahoney | Written by Greg Rucka and Sarah L. Walker, based on the graphic novel by Rucka and Leandro Fernandez | 107 min | ▲ | Netflix
Are you finding that years later you’re still counting the cost of the pandemic? For me, I measure the lasting impact to the way I perceive time and the inaccuracy of memory, though I suppose you could chalk both of those up to age. When the cinemas shut down in 2020, I really missed the summer blockbusters. What we had instead was The Old Guard, a Netflix action fantasy starring Charlize Theron and Chiwetel Ejiofor about a group of immortal warriors. I know I saw it, the review is here on FITI, but I have almost no memory of it. It clearly didn’t make much of an impact. I’m maybe more likely to remember the sequel, but for all the wrong reasons.
It brings us back into the company of these warriors trying to help humanity — Andromache aka Andy (Theron), having become mortal, Nile (Kiki Layne), Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who’s been temporarily exiled, cute Euro-couple, Joe and Nicky (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli), with mortal Copley (Ejiofor), an ostensible manager though also going on missions.
Another immortal, supposedly the eldest, is now on the scene: the ominously named Discord (Uma Thurman in her first major action role in years). Quynh (Veronica Ngo), who 500 years ago was entombed under the ocean and spent the intervening period drowning and resurrecting, she has returned. Tuah (Henry Golding), an archivist of the immortals, is also here. For reasons.
It turns out Discord was the one who found and brought Quynh up to the surface — no explanation how she managed that —and helps fuel her sense of betrayal and need for revenge against Andy for leaving her on the ocean floor all these years. Turns out Tuah is an ally to our heroes, though brings next to nothing to the story beyond Golding’s handsome presence.
Andy and Quynh have their long awaited face off — set up in a post-credit sequence in the first film — and it’s a damp squib. There’s no chemistry between the actors, and any queer coding is wasted by a distinct lack of passion.
It’s a full hour before the plot really begins — the dull first 60 minutes treats us to visits to Paris, Seoul, and Jakarta, but only two of those three locations get establishing shots — they couldn’t afford to conjure b-roll in Korea? We get a car chase along a highway in Riva del Garda, Italy, which will be familiar to anyone who watched Quantum of Solace, which it needs to be said — maybe the worst of the Daniel Craig James Bond movies, it’s still head and shoulders above this action nonsense.
The Old Guard 2 seems entirely concerned with characters’ secrets, but when they are revealed we wonder why the information was withheld in the first place. The suggestion that immortality can be gifted just serves to muddy the thematic threads. This movie may be extending the themes of the first one: love and aging and the price of violence, even for a good cause, but all of this is left withering on the vine.
The movie needs the team to confront Discord, there’s some business with a bomb in a flashy, modernist installation, but none of it provides any jeopardy. The best idea the movie has is to put a samurai sword in Thurman’s hand, evoking the actually immortal Kill Bill, but then the picture finishes on a cliffhanger, suggesting a third film will come to wrap it up. I’m sorry, based on what’s here I couldn’t care less.
