The Old Guard 2 review – Charlize Theron's delayed Netflix sequel is an incomplete mess

The Guardian

12 hours ago

Even with our thick-of-Covid desperation for anything that felt big at a time when life felt too small, there was more to The Old Guard than the average churned out Netflix mockbuster. Released in the hell of July 2020, it came with the requisite boxes ticked (big star, international locations, franchisable setup) but felt closer to the real thing than most, proving to be a hit for those eager for escapism, scoring one of the streamer's biggest launches to date.
But like many Netflix films, its cultural impact was negligible, popular for a weekend or three but failing to live on in any notable way after, consumed with speed and forgotten at a similar pace. A sequel was inevitable yet unnecessary, and while one was given a green light at the start of 2021 and started production in 2022, it's taken another three years to see the light of day. Not only does The Old Guard 2 bear the bruises of such a cursed post-production process but it's also weakened by such a distance from the first, forcing us to remember something most of us had resigned to the ether (it's telling that to promote the sequel, Netflix has recruited its stars to recap the first film).
It's not as if we're dealing with a straightforward action flick either, the mythology of The Old Guard, based on Greg Rucka's comic book series, requires enough convoluted exposition for us to pull up the original's Wikipedia plot description to understand just what the hell is going on in the follow-up. Should something intended to be a summer lark really feel like such hard work?
It's made mostly tolerable by Charlize Theron, an actor and a movie star we just don't see enough of and when we do, it's quite often not what we want to see her in. Theron, who gave us one of the greatest character studies of the 2010s in Jason Reitman's vastly underrated Young Adult, has decided to remain boringly unchallenged as of late, slumming it in flimsy franchise fodder (her last non-genre role was playing Megyn Kelly in 2019's dubious #MeToo dud Bombshell, although that could be conceivably classed as horror). She returns to play Andy, a once immortal warrior who (and I had to remind myself of this) was made mortal in the first film, a danger that should technically add suspenseful stakes to her extravagant fight sequences (but alas). This time around, an old comrade returns from centuries of punishment (Ngô Thanh Vân) and partners with a humanity-hating immortal (Uma Thurman) causing Andy and her team to take action.
While it should, in an era of increasingly bloated runtimes, be a boon to have it all wrapped up in under 97 minutes (sans end credits, far shorter than the 125-minute original), The Old Guard 2 is a panicked rush to wrap things up, poorly developed and confusingly plotted, a swift and savage franchise-killer. Along with last week's M3gan 2.0, which bombed at the box office after a 2.5 year gap, it serves as a reminder to studios why speed and simplicity are both essential for sequels in an attention economy where films just don't have the same media footprint they once had. In the time it took to beat this one into shape, it seems like those involved have also forgotten what made the first one work, the replacement of director Gina Prince-Bythewood with Victoria Mahoney leading to a considerable drop in action sequence effectiveness while the original's rather groundbreaking queerness has now been almost entirely excised. The first film had a surprising, swooning kiss from immortal lovers played by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, but this time around, their foreheads briefly touch instead. There's also a coy confusion over just what the relationship is between Andy and her one-time partner, who are gay in the comics, but are presented as, ahem, longtime companions here, the film acting as an amusingly abrupt end to Pride month.
Theron is an actor who's tirelessly working even when the script isn't asking her to, but this is a waste of not only her but also a returning Chiwetel Ejiofor, as well as Thurman who has moments of slithering fun as the villain but she's used so sparingly, it's akin to a cameo role. The last act sets her up to be a bigger part in the third film but, slight snag here, there hasn't been any official confirmation of The Old Guard 3, something that might shock viewers given the baffling cliffhanger ending. It's not as if some b-plot threads are left dangling but instead, the entire film is left shoddily unfinished, a truly heinous decision that threatens to turn the series into the new Divergent (a cancelled fourth film leaves that franchise forever incomplete). Perhaps that might be for the best.
The Old Guard 2 is now available on Netflix