Review: ‘The Old Guard 2' is a lifeless sequel that should have stayed buried

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

In the miserable pandemic days of July 2020, the release of ' The Old Guard ' brought some modest relief. Here was an intelligent superhero movie about a group of mercenaries with one specific but limited power: They were immortal.
Aside from that, they were normal people, subject to pain, temporary injury, emotional disturbance and capture. The limitations of their power made for a better and less scattered story than we'd come to expect, and 'The Old Guard' emerged as the best superhero movie since ' Black Panther ' (2018). It also seemed to point in a positive direction for the genre altogether, with its concentration on human-scale superheroes.
While the original was serious, 'Old Guard 2' is merely forlorn. Its story holds little interest and, to make matters worse, it doesn't even end. Instead, it stops mid-story, promising a sequel that feels less like a promise than a threat.
There's one haunting element, however, that makes good use of the movie's premise. Veronica Ngo plays Quynh, an immortal who, in the 16th century is accused of witchcraft and is sealed in an iron coffin before being thrown into the sea. But she doesn't just drown — she spends 500 years drowning, dying and waking up alive and drowning again, in an endless cycle of torture.
Understandably, when she is finally pulled up from the depths centuries later, she is slightly miffed at Andromache (Charlize Theron), a fellow immortal who promised to rescue her and never did. Accordingly, Quynh teams up with Andromache's sworn enemy, Discord (Uma Thurman), whose entire mission in life is to destroy Andromache and her comradely band of fellow immortals.
The movie operates with the idea that these immortals, working behind the scenes, are essential to the survival of humanity. But we can't really believe it this time out. 'The Old Guard 2' begins with Andromache and her compatriots killing dozens of security guards in a massive mansion. We have no idea why they're doing this. We have no reason to hate the people they're slaughtering and, five years since the last movie, we have no particular reason to like Andromache's team. It's just action for the sake of action.
Thus, when Discord shows up and starts causing trouble for the Old Guard, the fatal two-word thought enters the mind: Who cares?
Likewise, when Discord puts her cards on the table and reveals that she wants to 'end immortal interference' in the affairs of mortals, we can't help but think, 'OK. Fine. Is that really such a terrible idea?'
It's like when you go into a voting booth and read a proposition that you have no strong feelings about. 'Hmm, 'ending immortal interference.' That could be OK. Is that really a bad thing? Should I be against that?'
Clearly, 'The Old Guard 2,' like some propositions, is something you can skip, knowing you don't have a dog in that fight.
Or, to put it another way, this is a movie with two big problems: We're not worried about the fate of the Old Guard in terms of what it might mean for humans, in general, and we're not particularly worried about the members of the Old Guard themselves, because they seem so unhappy being alive forever that we can't help thinking they might be better off dead.