MOVIE REVIEW – Sitting comfortably atop Netflix Hungary’s top 10, The Old Guard 2 is proof that lightning rarely strikes twice. What once felt sharp and urgent has been replaced with a muddle of half-baked ideas, scattered energy, and a kind of creative fatigue you can’t shake, no matter how hard Charlize Theron tries to carry the weight. It’s a sequel that can’t recapture the spark of the original, stumbling out of the gate and never quite finding its footing.

When the original The Old Guard landed in July 2020, right in the thick of pandemic lockdown, it was a breath of fresh air among Netflix’s mass-produced action wannabes. With star power, exotic settings, and real franchise potential, it became an overnight streaming sensation—a global escape pod at a time when we were all desperate for one. This wasn’t just another Netflix knockoff; it was an honest-to-God action film with a pulse.

A Flash-in-the-Pan Hit With No Aftertaste

Yet like so many Netflix hits, The Old Guard left almost no cultural footprint. We binged it, we tweeted about it for a weekend, and then it vanished from the conversation. A sequel always seemed inevitable but hardly necessary. Nevertheless, Netflix pressed ahead in early 2021, the cameras rolled in 2022, and three years later, what we’ve got feels like a film stitched together by committee after a long, troubled journey. It’s telling that Netflix now has to jog everyone’s memory with recap videos—hardly a sign of enduring impact.

Worse, this isn’t even a straightforward action thrill ride. Greg Rucka’s graphic novel universe is so tangled in mythology and dense exposition that you practically need CliffNotes—or at least Wikipedia—just to keep up. Should a summer action movie really feel like homework?

Charlize Theron’s Herculean Effort Can’t Save the Script

The one thing that keeps the sequel from falling apart entirely is Charlize Theron, an actress whose talent is wasted far too often and who deserves better than franchise autopilot. Theron, who once dazzled in Jason Reitman’s criminally underrated Young Adult, has spent the last few years grinding through genre fare—her last proper dramatic lead was 2019’s divisive Bombshell (which, depending on your view, might count as horror). She’s back as Andy, the immortal warrior who lost her immortality last time—a twist that should make every brawl feel loaded with danger, but here, somehow, the tension evaporates. Instead, we get a convoluted reunion with an old comrade (Ngô Thanh Vân) and a new antagonist in Uma Thurman, whose turn as a misanthropic immortal is both undercooked and underused.

In an era when every blockbuster seems to overstay its welcome, you’d think a tight 97-minute runtime (a full half-hour shorter than the first film) would be a godsend. Instead, The Old Guard 2 comes across as an anxious, breakneck rush to the end credits—underdeveloped, hard to follow, and totally devoid of the emotional core that made the first film click. Hot on the heels of flops like M3GAN 2.0, it’s a masterclass in how not to manage a sequel in a media landscape where attention spans are shrinking by the second. Whatever chemistry and heart Gina Prince-Bythewood brought to the original are MIA under Victoria Mahoney’s direction. The groundbreaking queer romance has been defanged: where we once saw Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli share a sweeping kiss, now we get little more than a fleeting touch of foreheads. Andy’s relationship with her one-time partner—unapologetically queer in the source material—has been downgraded to “good friends,” as if the film’s too shy to say what’s really going on, and Pride Month just gets a cold shoulder.

Can Anyone Even Remember Why They Cared?

To her credit, Theron never phones it in—even as the script and direction leave her stranded. The same can’t be said for Chiwetel Ejiofor or Uma Thurman, both of whom are given so little to do that they may as well have Skyped in their performances. The final scene tries to set up Thurman as a major player for a third installment—but here’s the kicker: Netflix hasn’t even announced The Old Guard 3. So the movie ends not just with loose ends, but with a gaping hole where the story’s resolution ought to be, threatening to turn this franchise into another Divergent—unfinished, unresolved, and ultimately forgettable. Maybe that’s a mercy.

– Gergely Herpai “BadSector” –