Maxance Vincent
Gina Prince-Bythewood’s adaptation of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández’s The Old Guard is one of the best comic book adaptations you’ll ever see. This isn’t hyperbole – there simply isn’t a movie in the genre that’s as psychologically riveting and deeply humanist as how Prince-Bythewood frames a group of immortal mercenaries who are forced to reckon with the centuries they’ve spent on this planet once one of them becomes a mortal human. Charlize Theron hasn’t given a better performance than the one she delivers as Andromache of Scythia, who ponders what her life will be now that she has an expiration date.
While the film contains numerous excitingly kinetic action sequences, superbly cut together by Terilyn A. Shropshire, it’s in those moments of rumination where the movie shines the most, and where Prince-Bythewood showcases how immortality is more of a curse than a gift, and that, even if Andy is no longer unbreakable, “there are people still worth fighting for.”
Of course, when news of a sequel was announced, with the promise to focus on Andy’s relationship with Quynh (Veronica Ngô), who was revealed to be alive at the end credits of the first film, I was extremely excited to see what would happen next. And who wouldn’t be looking forward to seeing how this universe would expand after such a significant piece of genre cinema from one of the most humanist filmmakers working in Hollywood today?
Sadly, Gina Prince-Bythewood did not return to direct The Old Guard 2, despite cinematographer Barry Ackroyd lending his talents once more with Victoria Mahoney now in the director’s chair. And even though Ackroyd tries his best to replicate the intimate visual style Prince-Bythewood had developed for the first, in the hands of Mahoney, the film lacks immense texture and emotional depth. One can immediately tell the difference in how the sequel’s action is shot, and, more importantly, edited, during its opening scene, where Andy and her team, comprised of Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and human James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), storming a mansion in Croatia to obtain information regarding a potential threat that has re-emerged in the world.
The stuntwork on display doesn’t hold weight to the choreographies of the original, and the camerawork isn’t as fluid and tactile as Prince-Bythewood’s approach. However, and most unfortunately, the editing, this time by Matthew Schmidt, lacks intent: cuts seem random and constantly break the flow of emotion within the action, particularly when Andy and Quynh reunite. One can’t properly observe the choreography, as the scene is cut together with the same energy as Liam Neeson jumping a fence in Taken 3, with little to no continuity and emotional reason for this rapid editing.
However, when the two characters are paired on screen to express their feelings, they’re the film’s best moments, mainly because Theron had built such a strong foundation for the character in the original that her affection for Quynh remains palpable. Ngô is also excellent in representing her longing for Andy, which, despite what happened in the past, she still wants to hold onto until she finds out her partner has been helping humans after becoming one herself.
Instead of building upon this rivalry and making it the most psychologically active part of the film, as Quynh is manipulated by the first immortal, Discord (Uma Thurman), in having her revenge against Andy, Mahoney fills a considerable amount of The Old Guard 2 with endless bouts of exposition and table-setting for the potential third film. As a result, the dialogue feels clunky and half-baked, and none of the plot machinations are in any way interesting, since we’re never given a compelling reason to latch onto the characters this time around.
There’s very little time to expand upon the contemplation of Andy’s own mortality, save for a throwaway line where she says that the worst part about being mortal is the hangovers. In the eyes of Prince-Bythewood, Andromache was a fully formed human who, with the baggage she had, was able to sit with the centuries she spent protecting something that feels futile now that she knows her time is (slowly) coming. Instead of giving us more depth in this direction, Mahoney immediately retcons this with the introduction of Tuah (Henry Golding), Discord’s former partner, who is now hell-bent on stopping her kidnapping of Nile to regain the immortality she lost.
Nile is the last immortal, while Discord is the first. The two are interconnected and possess a power the other immortals do not have. That’s massive, yet this is barely explored within its 107-minute runtime, preferring to set the stage for a potential third film rather than actively telling a story that stands on its own two feet. The film moves at such a mile-a-minute pace that it eventually becomes hard to figure out exactly what’s happening, especially as Mahoney and Rucka cram in as much exposition as they possibly can lead up to whatever is going to happen next. It makes the action and character arcs that supposedly matter, such as Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) feeling remorse for his betrayal in the first film and atoning for his sins by making an ultimate decision, feel completely weightless.
This part should theoretically be of great importance, especially as Andy reconsiders what matters most in life when faced with mortality. However, when she is given the opportunity to become immortal again, what does it mean for her, and what does it mean for the people around her? We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. At least, this is how Mahoney frames it. It’s mostly unimportant and makes their exchanges, especially during the action-heavy climax, less emotionally invested and intimate than how Prince-Bythewood treated each member of the team in the first film.
I desperately tried not to compare the two filmmaking approaches in Prince-Bythewood’s first film to Mahoney’s in the sequel. However, when it was done so well in the first film, it makes it a more difficult pill to swallow when The Old Guard 2 wastes the talent of pretty much everyone involved, especially its cast of newcomers. Uma Thurman barely gets a blip on screen to develop her antagonist (compared to the time devoted to Harry Melling’s Steven Merrick in the first) beyond one-note clichés and has no sequence of note to remind audiences of the action movie talents she had in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
In fact, the only action sequence she has occurs at the end of the film and is so poorly shot and cut together that one even wonders if it was Gina Prince-Bythewood, first and foremost, who elevated Rucka’s screenplay and turned it into a deeply affecting work of art. Since we have the same writer from the first film (who wrote the comics) returning from the sequel, we have to wonder what happened because the characters were so well-developed and performed that it became easy to latch onto them as they reflected on the powers they have, or had.
None of that affection for the characters is found in The Old Guard 2. You have to essentially excavate in the fragments of humanity found in Andy and Quynh’s relationship to get anything remotely tangible, but even that feels incomplete. It’s even worse when you see how Schmidt edits sequences where Quynh releases all of her emotions by fighting Andy, and we can’t even see the towering stuntwork Ngo brings to the scene. She is a seasoned genre actress, and to see her being wasted like that breaks my heart even more than Thurman’s limited screentime or Golding’s Tuah being a pure exposition device.
Of course, the entire back half of The Old Guard 2 is a succession of gestures that only serve to tease the next film. Each line is a variation of “You can’t stop me, Andy. I am going to do this…in the sequel!” and it gets increasingly frustrating as it goes on. The emotional textures of the first film have completely evaporated. The raw humanism of Charlize Theron’s performance as Andromache is nowhere to be found. The action is dull and unengaging. The editing lacks the robustness of the first film. It all feels unnecessarily overcomplicated in its plotting and loses the sole reason why the original film felt so fresh and exciting. And now you want me to see a third film? Unless Gina comes back, I don’t really want it.
If anything, The Old Guard proves that the singular vision of Gina Prince-Bythewood was enough to make Rucka’s material feel alive and new in the realm of comic-book cinema. In the hands of Victoria Mahoney for The Old Guard 2, it doesn’t feel like anything at all.
SCORE: ★1/2
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