While it didn’t make it onto my Best of 2020 list, one of the few movies I vividly remember actually enjoying during my perpetual rut in the pandemic was The Old Guard. While clearly dumb action fluff hook, line and sinker, it cared enough to try and be more than the sum of its parts and it mostly succeeded: mostly clever worldbuilding, a soulful quality to the cast that kept their personalities and characters fresh, untuned yet gritty believable action and an interesting concept and execution that doesn’t immediately waste its gimmick.
Keep all this in mind when I say I really wanted “The Old Guard 2” to succeed….and how it only going half the distance is somehow more depressing than I originally thought.
With Gina Prince-Bythewood out of the directors chair, Victoria Mahoney has to bare the brunt of creative leadership this time around and, through no fault of her own, veers away from the humanitarian lens to double down on the more grandiose and fantastical aspects of the premise. Far from a problematic shift but her more out-of-hands-reach approach results in a paradoxical detour that, at least, feels vaguely familiar before diluting its focus towards a more detrimental outcome.
By a small miracle, the production design more or less mirrors the aesthetic sensibilities to that of the previous movie; spaciously sprawling what would’ve been flat window-dressing elsewhere into barely decipherable environmental storytelling, one that makes the best out of a hastily sketched canvas to lend an air of believability to the proceedings, offsetting both the semi-ambitious scope of its story and scale. The settings may not feel alive but you can tell the characters have lived through it. Only real issue is that this one is much less careful and considerate with its worldbuilding. Rather haphazard, uninspired and lost to a certain neglectful ambivalence, it still leaves us purposely adrift to peak our curiosity but what’s given to us has its glimpses of depth overshadowed by superficialities that the direction can only do so much to cover for.
Outside of somehow being both enhanced and hampered by the editing’s push-and-pulley of sporadic momentum, Barry Ackroyd’s cinematography carries a distinct, dark age comic book quality to its compositions and intriguing angle placements without a consistent visual aid to truly sustain it.
Its more forlorn tone doesn’t tighten the screw as effectively as its predecessor but does give us hints of a meditative that does naturally flow in spades, much of the pacing is consistent enough up until the last seventeen minutes (seriously, this runtime being literally twenty minutes shorter than the first film bites itself in the butt really hard by the time we get to the climax) and just like previously, the costumes only truly stand out when we’re thrusted into a different time period. Lorne Balfe, Ruth Barrett and Steffen Thum’s combined is both comfortably minimalist and grandiosely hearty even if the soundtrack is still bombarded by the weirdest and most literal of song choices; pity I don’t remember much of the score or that the sound design is mostly unremarkable.
And unfortunately, even the action has been downgraded. While hints of the grisly practicality and above-average choreography linger about, it’s more choppier than before with much less fluidity, and the tactile essence that defines the series is markedly less impactful and satisfying. The fun isn’t completely sapped from the proceedings, as I do remember three sequences in particular, but these fleeting moments of exhilaration do little to overshadow the pervasive sense that something fundamental is straight up missing.
The film does a massive disservice to its ensemble, barely making time for much of them and nullifying their characters but the cast pick up the scraps due to their chemistry together and subconsciously weaponizing the nuance they already have. Kiki Layne toughened it out despite her character’s drastic shift in focus, Luca Marinelli, Matthias Schoenaerts and Veronica Ngô give theirs a welcome amount of depth that isn’t necessarily there on the page, Chiwetel Ejifor and Uma Thurman elevate proceedings by just being there and even Charlize Theron, the only one here with both a hearty performance and a credible character arc to boot, can only do so much to imbue her character with a haunting weariness that permeates the screen.
Most of the cast gets out unscathed in spite of being handicapped and with flimsy dialogue too.
To try and be charitable with this story, this is just an aggravatingly bare-boned narrative that only gestures at its grander trappings while never truly taking full advantage of any of said potential; unfortunate par of the course for most action flicks these days. But this instance feels particularly egregious and vexing since the fun immortality Highlander-esque concept has now been wrung and bled dry of its excess allure and the sinuously rambling nature of its own structure and plot leaves it gapping with massive, yawning chasms that disrupt the flow and coherence of, honestly, a half-decent middle chapter. Like, for real, in comparison to the first film, this had a much better story on paper despite both stories being painfully simplistic. This one was ripe for further examination and if the screenplay was much more modest with its execution, it could’ve overcome its own sophomore slump without needing to water itself down; simply put, it doesn't push the story much further than what we’ve already seen.
Is the lore still objectively interesting contextually? Of course. But it also robs this story and its predecessor of its magic, the frequent shifting of rules and ritual turning this supposed quirk of fate into a directionless drift. The intricacies that once spun tales within tales are diluted into mere exposition dumps, flat backstories and half-baked character arcs that don’t make room for the stakes to actually matter; only one of them gets a suitable enough conclusion to their arc carrying over from previously. We’re at the mercy of a script that constantly has to bend every major relationship around some bombastic sequence to illicit any sense of immersion when they barely had to try as hard to pull it off the first time around without resorting to such laborious theatrics.
Despite it being both the vocal, emotional and mental crutch hovering over the entire project, all those promises on exploration of camaraderie, the existential musings of endless life, what happens when one has to truly make sense of their own morality in a world that doesn’t appreciate it — basically, the very prospect of grappling with the ideology of becoming human holds little psychological weight or emotional complexity….and it is MADDENING. You think that centering the movie around Andy confronting her guilt now that Quynh has resurfaced and being manipulated by a higher power for vengeance would’ve been the go-to move, especially as the two have now completely switched positions: Quynh becoming the embodiment of stunted, bitter disillusionment, her every action driven by the scars of betrayal and solitude, while Andy stands as the figure of hard-earned redemption, striving to show Quynh the light beyond her darkness. It does take up enough of the films focus to feel important but between struggling to give its actual main villain any substantive purpose and the litany of predictable plot twists barreling down the runway, you can’t help but feel like the entire project cheated you.
And that especially applies to how it wraps up….or the lack there of. Ok, you know what: I’m calling this out right now; I was able to give it a pass to The Last of Us and barely tolerated it for Squid Game, but I can’t keep doing this. Stop needlessly cutting your stories in half and then pretending it's a cliffhanger; it is asinine how lazy this storytelling crutch is, especially when the movie does next to nothing to justify that narrative bifurcation. What are you, The Order 1886? Are y’all trying to be the new Divergent? I don’t care if it’s supposedly a cheeky little nod to what an ending even means or represents to an immortal, everything about the ending is abrupt, unresolved, and lacking any real payoff.
Look, I can’t bring myself to revoke the knighthood of this follow-up, as its process of forfeiture is one that retains the faint echo of the path first tread by its predecessor. “The Old Guard 2” and its failure to fully deliver on its persistent resolve and sense of continuity is not of catastrophic proportions but rather a quieter resignation that keeps its integrity somewhat intact.
