Marvel has tricked the cinematic world into thinking that action movies should—and can effectively be—helmed by directors with little to no action experience.
The latest example of this dreary 21st-century trend is The Old Guard 2, a sequel to Netflix’s 2020 tale about immortal warriors that’s most notable for underscoring that director Victoria Mahoney, like her behind-the-camera franchise predecessor Gina Prince-Bythewood, is far more comfortable with brooding character drama than combat-heavy set pieces.
Then again, even the least violent passages of this follow-up—based on the comics of Greg Rucka, who wrote its script—are a tedious drag, courtesy of a story that asks nothing of its lead Charlize Theron and her underwhelming co-stars except endless, enervating moping.
The Old Guard 2, which hits streaming July 2, is about the sulkiest immortals of all-time, led by Andy (Theron), who actually lost the gift of eternal life in Prince-Bythewood’s original but continues to spend her every waking breath sorrowfully sighing and staring off into the distance (or in the mirror).
Though part of this is due to her impending demise (and dislike of hangovers), the primary source of Andy’s overwrought moodiness is Quỳnh (Vân Veronica Ngô), her long-ago best friend from whom she was separated when Quỳnh was confined in an iron casket and dumped in the middle of the ocean. This resulted in centuries of torture, with Quỳnh drowning, coming back to life, and then drowning again (ad infinitum). Thus, when she’s freed from her watery prison by Discord (Uma Thurman), Quỳnh is unsurprisingly mad about the fact that Andy failed to rescue her.
The Old Guard distinguished itself from its slam-bang brethren by featuring two gay superheroes in Andy’s immortal colleagues Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). Yet despite that duo’s continued involvement, The Old Guard 2 proves terrified of overtly depicting Andy and Quỳnh as lovers. Instead, it lesbian-codes their every interaction, all of them marked by oh-so-sad looks that could only be the result of profound amour, and skirmishes in which they appear this close to kissing—including one mid-battle moment featuring Andy cradling Quỳnh’s face as if she’s ready to smooch.
For a supposedly progressive series such as this, playing so coy comes across as silly, if not cowardly. However, it’s no more frustrating than Theron’s decision to employ one melancholy expression for the proceedings’ entirety.
Before she learns about Quỳnh’s re-emergence, Andy and her team—Joe, Nicky, Nile (KiKi Layne), and James (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the last of whom is a powerless everyman—storm an arms dealer’s compound in what turns out to be a depressingly lethargic opener.
Mahoney stages and executes this siege with the same perfunctory blandness that typifies her ensuing battles with guns, blades, and, in Andy’s case, a battle axe. The Old Guard 2’s laziness is epitomized by an unarmed Andy, suddenly confronted by anonymous adversaries, realizing that hey, there just happens to be a sword hanging on the wall behind her. Still, that’s less awkward than KiKi discovering a tribal spear on a door and being told by Andy, “It looks good on you.”
Following their initial, pointless mission (which merely leads to a go-our-separate-ways vacation), Joe tries to visit exiled immortal Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), only to find that he’s missing. Booker has been angrily interrogated by Quỳnh, and he eventually makes his way back to Andy to give her the lowdown on the situation.
This begets additional gloomy scowling by Andy, who’s informed by her old immortal pal Tuah (Henry Golding)—who has an extensive subterranean library—that the first immortal, Discord, has been amassing wealth and power for unknown purposes. As it turns out, the villainess is determined to stop Andy from interfering in human history because she doesn’t like the fact that whenever Andy saves an innocent life, that person’s descendants wind up doing great, civilization-changing things.
That weak motive is, thankfully, not the sole reason Discord is wreaking havoc, although The Old Guard 2 dispenses purely generic surprises, encounters, resolutions, and images. Marinelli and Kenzari are largely sidelined by the proceedings and Ejiofor, playing a superfluous supporting intel-officer non-entity, is simply asked to say things over the radio like, “Get to the control room. Open that door.”
Layne’s KiKi, who was the main focal point the first time around, barely partakes in any battles, of which there are shockingly few, and which are shot by Mahoney with the usual combination of straightforward compositions, rapid edits, and functional choreography. Of a bad lot, the best is a one-on-one fight between Andy and Quỳnh, if only because it takes place in daylight and is therefore lucid. The same can’t be said about a finale at an Indonesian nuclear facility whose murkiness obliterates any excitement.
Characters say precisely what they feel and sacrifice themselves for no persuasive reason, but The Old Guard 2’s biggest problem is that it makes being an unkillable badass look like a burdensome chore. Rucka casts his protagonists as humorless and featureless save for Andy’s gift for perpetual pouting, and his narrative is a paint-by-numbers affair that boasts zero novel ideas or incidents.
While Theron and Marinelli’s hair is longer than it was in their initial outing, no one in this inert supernatural saga has changed, much less grown, and that lack of development extends to Quỳnh, whose anger comes across as pretty muted considering that she’s been trapped in a 500-year cycle of life and death that would drive anyone completely insane.
The Old Guard 2 works its way to a climactic clash between Theron and Thurman that completely fails to live up to the promise of seeing the Atomic Blonde and Kill Bill actresses throw down. Once again shrouded in darkness that mutes its intended effect, it’s a fittingly deflating finish for a film dedicated to hitting familiar action notes—well, that and retconning its ancestor’s big twist in order to facilitate future sequels.
A cliffhanger suggests that a third chapter is apparently in the cards. On the basis of this listless offering, however, the streaming series has already reached the end of its natural lifespan.
