The Old Guard 2 (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
Jul 2
3 min read

Updated: Jul 7

THE OLD GUARD 2 (2025)

Featuring Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Matthias Schoenaerts, Vân Veronica Ngô, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Uma Thurman, Henry Golding, Kamil Nożyński, Slavko Sobin, Christophe R. Tek, Lorenzo Acquaviva, and the voices of Peter Arpesella and Todd Cattell.

Screenplay by Greg Rucka and Sarah L. Walker.

Directed by Victoria Mahoney.

Distributed by Netflix. 107 minutes. Rated R.

Charlize Theron’s near-future anti-superhero movie The Old Guard became a big hit five years ago when it was released on Netflix while we were all sheltering in place during the entertainment-starved pandemic year.

However, five years is a long time, particularly in the world of made-for-Netflix films. Not only are theaters back up and running now, but many hundreds of straight-to-streaming films have been released in that time. Since Netflix throws so much content out there, they are often short-lived smashes before they retreat into the back alleys of the Netflix menu, and of our memories. For example Bird Box, The Grey Man, Don’t Look Up, Heart of Stone, Leave the World Behind – when was the last time you even thought of any of those films?

More to the point, when was the last time you thought about The Old Guard?

Is five years too long for a fickle audience to still care what is happening to these characters? Will anyone even really remember what was happening? (I did vaguely, but I can’t say I strongly remembered much of the first film.)

The makers of The Old Guard 2 don’t seem to care all that much whether you remember or not, plunking you down right away in the middle of the action with little in the way of prologue or recap. It’s like they are saying to buckle in and try to catch up.

Eventually the lore behind the story comes back to you – at least in part, I’m not sure I ever remembered it all. This is a group of immortal mercenaries – they can be badly hurt and even killed, but eventually their bodies will regenerate and heal. They are a force for good – mostly – but they are constantly in an up and down battle for humanity’s soul.

However, like in the original film, eventually things slow down a bit. This is not to say that The Old Guard 2 doesn’t have tons of expensive and complex action sequences. It’s just that some of the best moments in this franchise are more human (or immortal); two or more of the heroes sitting, talking and probing the mysteries of humanity and their particular places in the huge swath of history.

Also, on top of their already smart and accomplished cast, The Old Guard 2 adds familiar faces Uma Thurman (as the villain) and Henry Golding (as another previously unrevealed immortal).

In the end, The Old Guard 2 has many of the same problems as the first film – although magnified. The lore is overly convoluted and hard to keep track of, the action scenes are a bit overdone and many of the story detours flirt with cliché.

The acting, particularly coming from Theron and Schoenaerts, is extremely good, but it is at the whim of some rather odd character developments and plot whiplashes. And Uma Thurman’s ultimate baddie character is played at a heightened, slightly hammy level which clashes with the somber tone of the rest of the movie. The performance would work perfectly well in a much different film, but here it almost appears to be fighting against the rest of what is going on. Frankly, even though Thurman is supposed to be the main antagonist, Theron’s physical and verbal battles with another immortal played by Vân Veronica Ngô are much more intriguing.

The Old Guard 2 closes out with a pretty obvious setup for yet another sequel, and yet I think that if it takes another five years to make, even fewer people will be waiting to return to this world than are this time around.

Jay S. Jacobs