The action is largely overshadowed by the question of who will live forever in a shoddy sequel that takes itself excessively seriously.
“The Old Guard 2” opens with one of those violent and extravagant preludes—in this case, the Netflix version, with lighting reminiscent of a Swiffer commercial—that attempts to resemble an old James Bond film: a sequence in which the exaggeration is matched by how little we are told about what is actually happening. Andy (Charlize Theron), wearing sunglasses and dark hair, leads her team—I call them the I-Team, because they are immortal and cool—as they infiltrate a villa full of guards, whom they eliminate in one-on-one confrontations, mostly by stabbing them to death.
Director: Victoria Mahoney
Writers: Greg Rucka, Sarah L. Walker, Leandro Fernandez
Stars: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts
They try to get to Mr. Big, who turns out to be an anonymous guy in red silk pajamas who is destroyed like all the others. This flashy but insignificant teaser sequence is, in theory, Bond-esque, but as soon as Andy and his team return to headquarters, planning what comes next, the atmosphere starts to move closer to that of a "Fast & Furious" movie. Only "The Old Guard 2" doesn't have that "Fast & Furious" energy. It's more like "The Languid and the Annoying."
Five years ago this week, "The Old Guard" premiered on Netflix, and I confess it's not exactly a film that has stayed with me. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, however, it had more oomph than this logical, melancholic, overly conceited, and solemnly "meditative" second chapter. Prince-Bythewood didn't return for the sequel. The new director is Victoria Mahoney, who doesn't seem to realize she's making "The Expendables Part 9" on self-healing limbs.
“The Old Guard 2,” now that it has officially become the centerpiece of a franchise, takes the mythology of the “Old Guard” with excessive seriousness. It wouldn't be the first film based on a graphic novel to do so. Greg Rucka, screenwriter of the “The Old Guard” graphic novel series, co-wrote the script for “The Old Guard 2” (with Sarah L. Walker) and is one of the film's executive producers. He obviously wants us to immerse ourselves in the intense drama of these immortals, who live forever… until they don't. They can wake up any day and discover their immortality is gone. That's what happened to Andy halfway through the first film, and now, as she deals with her new, vulnerable condition, she finds herself besieged by characters from her past, like Quynh (Veronica Van), the fierce warrior she fought alongside for 1,500 years, until Quynh was found guilty of witchcraft, encased in an iron maiden, and cast to the bottom of the sea. (That cooled the friendship somewhat.) Quynh now seeks revenge on Andy and the world, a quest that has her allied with a new character named Discord, who also comes from the past, but is played by Uma Thurman with a corporate hauteur that doesn't exactly make her look like someone who emerged in the Middle Ages.
There's a nice extended shot where Andy walks through a passageway in Rome, passing people from her past as the place slowly rewinds in time. We're supposed to be seeing her memories, and there should have been more of that. But for all the talk of centuries past, "The Old Guard 2" feels like a cheaply made time-travel action fantasy. The question of who is immortal or not, and how you can become immortal (or lose that ability), starts to feel like part of an arbitrary cinematic game, like "Who has the detonator?" And the actors, caught in what is often empty, somber chatter, seem stranded in a way they weren't in the first film.
Theron is physically imposing, and when Andy and Quynh confront each other in an alley, the film briefly comes alive. But the comic-book soap opera of their broken bond is too abstract to sustain. Nile, played by KiKi Layne, still retains her cleansing ferocity; Henry Golding plays a new immortal, Tuah, who isn't given enough to do; while Matthias Schoenaerts, as the beleaguered Booker (who betrayed the group and now wants back), comes across as a bit withdrawn.
Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Copley, the CIA agent turned I-Team ally, lends his elegant style to lines like, “It would be inadvisable to discharge any firearm near the core.” The core, in this case, refers to a Chinese nuclear reactor, hidden in Indonesia, that Discord has threatened to blow up. It’s all part of his quest for immortality, but by the end of The Old Guard 2, it’s mostly the clichés that seem to live on forever.
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