Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Charlize Theron, A.J. Dix, Beth Kono and Marc Evans Director: Victoria Mahoney Screenplay: Greg Rucka and Sarah L. Walker Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Veronica Ngo, Henry Golding, Uma Thurman and Chiwetel Ejiofor Distributor: Netflix
Grade: C-
One has come to dread Netflix attempts to create action franchises for their insatiable audience. Remember the Russo brothers’ “The Gray Man,” a big-budget bomb so bad that even Ryan Gosling could do little to rescue it? Sequels and spin-off are apparently still in the works, nonetheless. Or Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon,” the dreadful “Star Wars” ripoff that managed to limp along for two installments in 2023-24 but, despite plans for further episodes, appears to have been mercifully put on indefinite hiatus. These are but two examples.
The streamer was a bit more successful with “The Old Guard,” Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2020 action flick about a bunch of gung-ho heroes who foiled nefarious plots against humanity. It was pretty much a standard-issue piece of high-energy schlock, but its source, Greg Rucka’s graphic novels, gave it a hook with a certain distinction: the members of the crew were all immortals dating from different eras (ancient Greece, the Crusades) who could revive after being killed—until for some inexplicable karmic reason their immortal state was abruptly terminated. The plot, involving the machinations of a Big Pharma mogul to tap into their power for his own purposes, was nonsense, but it allowed for plenty of “historical” backstory, interpersonal complications and action. It also brought a couple of new members into the fold.
And it didn’t hurt that the leader of the group, Andromache, or Andy for short, was a sexy Scythian warrior played by an attractive, athletic Charlize Theron.
Now half a decade later Rucka returns with a continuation featuring the same cast and a few new characters but helmed by a different director, Victoria Mahoney. She proves proficient enough, but the plot—which, unsurprisingly enough, turns out once again to be about extracting the members’ power of immortality for nefarious purposes—is a bummer.
The picture begins with what’s become the obligatory action prologue, with the Guard attacking a remote estate and offing its army of defenders to take out a bigwig bad-guy, who’s quickly identified as merely one more underling to an as-yet unknown master plotter. Not so coincidentally, as it happens, another immortal forbiddingly named Discord (Uma Thurman) rescues from her watery repeated grave Quỳnh (Veronica Ngo), Andy’s onetime partner, who’d been convicted of witchcraft five centuries before and submerged in an iron maiden, in which she drowned and revived over and over again. Discord recruits the angry, sullen Quỳnh, who believes that Andy had abandoned her, for her plan—which, she says, aims to end the race of immortals completely and involves bombing a secret Chinese nuclear facility.
Andy and her team—lovers Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), who met as enemies during the crusades; recent addition Nile (KiKi Layne), a soldier killed in the Afghan war; and Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), the veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who was exiled in the previous installment but is now welcomed back into the fold— aim to foil Discord. They’re aided by another newly introduced immortal, the librarian Tuah (Henry Golding), whose collection of books was raided by Discord but remains a font of information and speculation about the history of immortals, and by Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the ex-CIA man who’s become the Guard’s quasi-manager. Andy, of course, also wants desperately to reconcile with Quỳnh.
Rucka and co-writer Sarah L. Walker work hard to add some depth and surprise to what’s happening, including an act of self-sacrifice also presented as one of atonement, but nothing—not even the fight sequences, competently but unimaginatively choreographed by Georgi Manchev, or the effects (VFX supervised by Charlie Iturriaga, SFX by Uli Nefzer)—lifts the movie from a prevailing sense of drabness and familiarity. Mahoney does what she can to inject some energy into the proceedings, but she’s hobbled by Barry Ackroyd’s gloomy cinematography, Paki Meduri’s dreary production design, Mary E. Vogt’s equally uninspired costumes and, especially, Matthew Schmidt’s listless editing. The generic score by Ruth Barrett and Steffan Thum is of little help.
Nor does the cast seem terribly invested. Apart from Layne, who’s energetic to a fault, and Thurman, who affects a pose of utter disdain, everyone seems slightly fatigued rather than ready for action. One can understand why: they must have read the script, which ends with a dull thud of recognition that this is but the middle episode in a projected trilogy, the end of which may be another five years off.
Deriving from an inauspicious beginning—the mediocre Part I—this sequel never promised much, but it delivers less.