An unusually credible Netflix Action on a team of immortal mercenaries selling their skills to the highest bidder, Gina Prince-Bythewoods “The old guard“Was an oasis in the desert when it sank on Netflix at the height of the pandemic, but I would lie if I said it has really stuck with me for the last five years. And yet there is a detail in its story that I have not been able to shake – a character deserted so bleak that it made it forever a fate that is worse.
If you have seen the movie (or read the graphic novel series that it is based on), you know what I am talking about: An eternal warrior called Quỳnh (van Veronica NGO) is sealed in an iron flow during the witch test of a 16th century and thrown at the bottom of the sea, where she is sentenced to the end. Not fun!
Whether it can, quỳnh did not seem so happy when she appeared in an inexplicable way on the surface at the end of film. The appearance of her face was less “I am so relieved to have air in the lungs for the first time in more than 500 years”, and more “It’s a shame my friends are forever, for I really Want to murder them because I let myself suffocate in hell for half a millennium. ”
What we already know and what quỳnh is in conflict to learn toward the beginning of ”The old guard 2“Is that fate will give her the chance for revenge, as her ride-and-not-die bestie Andromache (Charlize Theron) somehow lost their forces during the previous film. And so the scene seems to be set on a fun and emotional filling grudge match of a sequel to two several thousand year olds fighting for the best way to spend the rest of their sudden limited time together.
Unfortunately, none of these women can imagine how limited that time will be. For one thing, the oldest immortal of them all (A Thurman As Discord) has returned with a plan to clear the earth of its own kind. For another is “The Old Guard 2” frustrating – if it also clearly – rushed after a movie about people who have lived for Eons, and it never gives some Of their characters, the chance is that meaningful hash out how the friendships can pull tighter when they are twisted for a few hundred decades.
What does it mean to hurt someone who lives forever? How deep can a wound parties when time fails to heal it? Was Andy and Quỳnh in love, or are Hays-Code-Homoerotic between them intended to reflect a relationship that is too large to be defined by deadly parameters? Some of these subjects are addressed nominally through annoyed thread-fu and/or an elaborate shootout near the core of a nuclear power plant, and “The Old Guard 2”-which hits the ground and takes considerably silly pleasure in being unlimited from the table set that sucked the Rolan from the first-exemption in the rare moment when the rare moment is fight for.
However, even more than its predecessor, this sequel is too busy satisfying the basic conditions in their genre to do something memorable with them. Worse: The madness incomplete nature in his story – which ends on Netflix’s biggest rock master since “Squid Game 2”, but without the advantage of a third chapter in the can – leaves the film with a deteriorated post -strip, not only because it is so unsatisfactory, but also because it confirms the moral of Greg manus in the worst possible way. Andy tells us that time is just as meaningful as you do. In that sense, it is difficult not to feel the 104 minutes that it takes to look at “The Old Guard 2” is more waste than they are worth.
Anyone who is still loved to these characters from Prince-Bythewood’s payout will probably enjoy the chance to catch them, but in short it may be. Helming its first film since 2011’s “Yelling to the Sky”, replacement director Victoria Mahoney Grip on the fun of watching Andy’s crew run against danger without care in the world, and this sequel’s explosive opening sequence-a raid at a gun dealer in Croatia-made a million times more fun by the devil May Care Attitude as Immortals as Nicky (Luca Marinelli, Fresh of his silence Car chase that cuts things.
Nile Freeman (Kiki Layne) was a new recruit last time, but she is already an adult to death for death, largely to the same extent as the recently deadly Andy has not yet developed one. Chiwetel Ejiofors CIA connection also returns as an audience surrogate of kind (any Needs gabbas at all the carnage), and although he doesn’t get lots to do, no movie has ever worsen by having more Chiwetel Ejiofor in it. And what about Matthias Schoenaert’s Booker, which was banished to betray the old guard as part of an attempt to cure his eternity? Well, he’s back too, if only so quỳnh can use him to find Andy.
While his scenes with the group are some of the film’s best for how they weigh a single mistake against several millennia of solidarity, there are other traces of shade at the beginning of this story. Still one of the big Underreungs action stars from the 21st century, Theron can delegate most of her performance in these films to her jet-black Wig, but she is convincingly selling the idea that Andy likes her newfelt mortality and everything that it means-backing is brutal, but getting full is much more fun. The double -edged sword of her reunion with Quỳnh is sharpened by the threatening death spectacle, and Mahoney opens it up with a smart (and seemingly in the camera) who finds Andy who goes through the centuries to meet the woman who once went with her.
But as the film starts to talk through WHYS and how to live forever, the procedure for everything starts to distract from the emotions, and disagreement is never enough interesting as a villain to motivate all the leg work required to know their action. Henry Golding plays a bookkeeper whose sole purpose is to set up Lore, but Discord’s threat always feels more contradictory than inevitable.
Thurman glows with the best of them, but a furtive plane and some hard stares are not enough to support a character that has probably been miffered at We mortals ever since she saw Jesus being crucified in front of her eyes. Does she want to clear us from the planet, because cutting a nuclear power plant can suggest, or is she more concerned about her own suffering? “The Old Guard 2” tells the answer, but forces us to wait for the next movie, if even is A next movie, to shit about how she got there, or what it could mean for Andy’s constantly complicating relationship with Quỳnh.
And there is a valuable little pleasure to be found in the launch that the climatic struggle-where Beatrix Kiddo finally gets to flex its skills-is an underlight CGI-BLA party showing how eager this franchise is to sacrifice its eternal characters at the altar of hyperepheral streaming drugs. The non-final is particularly disappointing at the end of a movie that makes an effort, at least during the first half, to run with its condition. The action can be choppy, and the camera is growing more and more focused on compensating for small cheating in the film’s stunt work, but Mahoney never misses a chance to crush a couple of legs that can grow back, or to crush someone through a window without worrying about what can happen if they capture a cut in the glass in the throat.
When he looked at Joe, his disassembled thumbs back on his hand with a perfect “thumbs up”, it is hard not to wish that his franchise could magically contract in the same way. Unfortunately, those who loved the “old guard” will be the most annoyed by the decision to leave their sequel to be discontinued in half. Whether it is the ultimate goal of her plan or just a by -product of what she is really looking for, Discord is happy for people to suffer; In one way or another, she is about to get her wish.
Rating: c
“The Old Guard 2” is now available to stream on Netflix.
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