Charlize Theron in the sequel to Netflix Action

A welcome surprise after months of cocovated locking and release calendars, The old guard came in 2020 to demonstrate that the hard action and the drama textured emotionally should not be excused each other. His well -developed lead characters could manage with MMA combat movements, knives, swords and bronze age axes. But they also had moving interior, their immortality condemning them to painful loneliness and loss. Arriving five years later, the sequel to Netflix has most of these elements, but the secret sauce is missing – the dominant direction of Gina Prince -Bythewood.

Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne return respectively, the old – although magnificent, tonic and agile – respectively – the warrior and the powerful nascent immortal, as well as a solid support of support which includes Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli like Joe and Nicky, the gay couple whose relationship between relations. Joe’s shameless love declaration and the passionate kiss that they shared in the back of a truck full of machine shields in the first film was a gift to a hungry queer audience for a representation in superhero cinema.

Again adapted by Greg Rucka of the Graphic Novel series which he wrote with the illustrator Leandro Fernandez, this time working with co-series Sarah L. Walker, the suite obviously cannot repeat the novelty of his predecessor. But the first film worked not only thanks to the dimensionality of the characters and the charismatic distribution. It was also the musculature that Prince-Bythewood brought to the physical action and the corresponding depth that it instilled in emotional beats.

Victoria Mahoney, who has largely produced on episodic television as well as the second unit Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalkerdoes a polished job and maintains a confident rhythm. But the rest is ultimately more competent than exciting, and its moments of pathos resonate too rarely.

The latest film ended with Andy (Theron) mysteriously losing its immortality; Another soldier Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) exiled for 100 years due to betrayal; And the CIA Copley agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) changing aside, committing to use his expertise to cover the group’s tracks and direct them to their services everywhere. A coda six months later showed Booker drowning his sorrows in Paris, returning home to find Quynh (Veronica Van) in her apartment.

This immortal was Andy’s beloved companion, there is time when it was only about them, although the following refuses to deal with the involvement they were in love. (Why did Coyness? Netflix thought that two queer couples were too numerous?)

Quynh was sentenced for witchcraft 500 years earlier and buried alive at sea in an iron coffin wrapped in chains. Her ability, like her immortal colleagues, to regenerate each time she dies means that she returns to life and drowns again for five centuries. This gave Quynh time to feed his hatred for humanity and his rage to Andy, who had promised to be by his side until the end. She is caught out of the ocean and revealed a breath for a brief prologue.

The actual film takes a promising start with its most exhilarating action piece, taking place in a magnificent villa on the Croatian coast where a large affair of weapons takes place. (In reality, it is a magnificent piece of real estate porn on Lake Como; the production was mainly shot in Italy.) While the Nile (Layne) observes from a boat and Joe and Nicky distract some of the guards by accelerating in two vintage sports, parked outside, Andy and Copley enter the mansion, where she finds a sick lède on the wall.

Mahoney, director of photography Barry Ackroyd, combat choreographer Georgi Manchev and the team of actors and stuntmen all work at the top of their game here, with Beatdown after Beatdown, interspersed with a pulse car while Joe and Nicky are chased by the guards. The Bravura sequence obtains a fresh jerk when the Nile abandons its ship to the belvedere and makes a spectacular entrance.

Unfortunately, although there are a lot of combat scenes to come to come, the continuation never finds the explosive energy of the opening. But it’s never dull, which means that fans of the first film will want to stay the course.

When the protagonists come together in their safe house, Copley informs them that the dead man whom they believed to be the buyer of weapons was in fact only a conduit for an unidentified woman, seen on video surveillance awaiting facial recognition results. But the Nile recognizes it with a dream in a library full of old volumes.

This library is the result of many working lives of the old friend of Andy, Tuah (Henry Golding), who abandoned the soldier to devote himself to the documentation of the place of immortals in history – the cause and the effect of their exploits that Copley has drawn.

Tuah reveals that several volumes of her work have been stolen by a woman with many names, now Discord (Uma Thurman), an immortal whose existence is previous to Andy. They learn that discord has spent five centuries living in the shadows, amazing incalculable wealth and power. It now goes after an even larger price, using Quynh to go to Andy and Co.

The script of Rucka and Walker skillfully fills whites in the specific way in which an immortal can become fatal, which provides answers to Andy, as well as the revelation that the power rendered can be granted to another.

This leads to affecting developments once the disillusioned book is accepted in the fold. Andy’s Couvante nature obtains fresh fuel with the re -emergence of avenging Quynh, but with the Nile more accepting his mentoring, the relationship between these two women acquires new warmth and humor. “I am deadly, but I am not retired,” said Andy who goes when the Nile shows concern about his state of mind.

There is an electrifying combat scene, overwhelmed with emotional luggage and guilt, after Andy found Quynh in Rome and they detached it in an alley with a lot of game of fancy legs. Although there is no shortage of firearms, knives and various other blades used in clashes, the accent on physics, on the body against the body, is a force shared by the two films. Ditto the fact that, fatal or immortal, the characters feel the pain of their injuries.

Hangout’s scenes are again pleasant, even if Kenzari and Marinelli are underused apart from their daredevil in the pursuit of the car. Nothing is close to the magic of Swoony of their big moment in the first film, although it is sweet to watch them go to bed together, with Joe reprimanding Nicky on his snoring when he drank. But an intimate scene that seems to be built towards a kiss ends instead with them blurring the fronts. Hue!

However, the fact that these two were spared from a large part of loneliness and sorrow suffered by their comrades because they have always had each other, which is a tender note of queer affirmation.

The culminating section, while it folds in certain mobile moments for Andy, becomes more routine once the action moves to a Chinese secret nuclear installation in Indonesia, rigged by explosives. Everything points to the inevitable Smackdown between Andy and Discord – not to mention between Theron, whose combat skills were exhibited and not only The old guardbut also in Mad Max: Fury Road And Atomic blondeand Thurman, immortalized like black Mamba in the Kill Bill movies. But this early confrontation is planned.

The end of the cliffhanger clearly indicates a third film in planning, then perhaps the filmmakers save their big guns for a last chapter. Whatever his shortcomings, The old guard 2 is an original streaming feature better than the average – well played by a highly capable cast, dotted with sufficient action to satisfy most appetites, and underlined with a melancholic vein of introspection on the conflictual roles of superheroes.