“The Old Guard 2,” Netflix’s slick follow-up to their hit pandemic-era fantasy action film, lacks any sizable reason to be invested in its existence. I wouldn’t say this film, about a group of immortal soldiers, is poorly acted or poorly shot. This picture even brings back the leading players who made the first installment (directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood) so enjoyable.
In the film’s big, whirling opening, Charlize Theron (playing the now-mortal Andy) storms a garish Italian villa where shadowy arms dealers are loading weapons. As a distraction, Andy dispatches Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), the franchise’s lovable queer couple, to pull some of these goons into a winding car chase. James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Andy’s former adversary turned teammate, raids the villa with her. Some swift editing by Matthew Schmidt (“Captain America: Brave New World“) and active camerawork by Barry Ackroyd (“The Hurt Locker”) effortlessly capture the melee within the mansion, which culminates in Nile (KiKi Layne) crashing a speedboat through a window. It’s an intense, well-choreographed scene that, unlike the rest of the film, shows an even interest in the entire ensemble.
The rest of “The Old Guard 2,” an emotionally inert slog directed by Victoria Mahoney, is burdened by Greg Rucka’s dull and underdeveloped script. There isn’t much of a story here. And though the sequel adds a few new faces, there aren’t many fully defined characters either.
See, it doesn’t take very long to spot the massive holes in “The Old Guard 2.” Whereas the first film did some careful world-building, this one haphazardly reveals that Nile’s been having dreams about a woman named Discord (Uma Thurman) pilfering an ancient library belonging to another immortal named Tuah (Henry Golding). Andy and Copley head directly to Tuah to investigate, while Andy and Nicky trail Joe, whom they discover has secretly remained friends with Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) despite the immortal betraying the team.
Booker is quickly invited back into the fold when he tells them Quỳnh (Vân Veronica Ngô), Andy’s former persecuted partner, has risen from the sea after centuries of imprisonment to squad up with Discord. Unnecessary globetrotting fills the background of these events, while bland dialogue takes over the foreground. The script establishes very few arcs, and there are even fewer mentions of the outside world, which now apparently allows these soldiers to roam freely despite having been outed six months ago.
Even with such a maze-y plot, this film doesn’t have much use for its ensemble. Characters once integral to the first installment, such as Nicky and Joe, disappear for long stretches. Copley lacks any memorable scene or defining purpose. Nile appears to exist solely as a plot device, in which Tuah tells Booker that because she’s the last immortal, a wound from her can either zap an immortal of their powers or transfer their longevity to someone else. Even Discord is a tinny one-note villain who barely receives any substantive purpose. If it weren’t for Thurman in the role, she’d be unmemorable.
“The Old Guard 2” only has room for Theron, a problem compounded by Andy disappointing this time around, too. While the other characters briefly contemplate what it means to die, Andy never expresses her thoughts on the subject, despite having existed without her powers for the last six months. Instead, she makes a joke about getting hangovers, and we see a couple of scenes where she’s slower getting up. No thought she utters about being human holds any psychological or emotional complexity, a quandary the film approaches as a mere formality.
Even Andy’s relationship with Quỳnh feels out of focus. Instead of introducing a new character like Discord (who fulfills the genre’s requirement of engineering a climactic setpiece by hijacking a nuclear facility in Indonesia), you get the sense this film would’ve worked better as a more modest piece that didn’t force their relationship to bend around bombastic action elements. Because when Mahoney lets the characters’ estrangement play out intimately, the film discovers an emotional pulse. There’s one scene, for instance, where Andy walks through several alleys whose walls slowly turn back the clock to ancient Rome, where Quỳnh awaits. An eloquently choreographed fight follows, further elaborating on the centuries of hurt shared by these women with far more effectiveness than any dialogue could accomplish. More scenes like that might’ve saved “The Old Guard 2” from circling the drain of its runtime.
Despite Mahoney’s best efforts, however, “The Old Guard 2” struggles to turn those brief sparks into a fire. These characters possessed far more soul in the prior film: they walked through every scene with centuries of baggage and loss; they spoke of times gone by with wonder and awe; they cared for one another. None of that is present here. There isn’t even a team here. These are people fulfilling a concept. They’re biding their time until a sequel. They may be having a nice vacation on their off days from shooting. But it doesn’t appear that many of them managed to concentrate long enough to make a worthwhile movie.
