blmulholland-14261

Old Guard 1 was a solid movie. It was a fun premise, and the immortals were uncommon enough that they felt exceptional. Andi's loss of her immortality (not a spoiler for this movie, this is the sequel) in the first movie added some stakes, and created some potential for character development as we wonder how an immortal would handle being mortal.

OG2 seems to have missed every single thing that made the first one work. The world of immortals is implicitly expanded. Lore that feels cheesy and 'convenient' is added. Andy's interesting character opportunity is practically thrown away.

On top of that, the action choreography got dramatically worse. The acting got worse. Characters do things with the narrowest slivers of rationale behind them. It's honestly hard to think of a single thing this movie does as well or better than the original.

It feels like every sequel mistake is made. Stakes and development from the first movie is undone to get us back to a status quo. The additional lore and rules that don't make sense other than to drive the minimal plot that exists.

Definitely not watching the 3rd one, and honestly, the only way I finished the 2nd was by leaving it on while I did other things.

The first episode is mostly recounting the emotional impact of 9/11. The second seems to focus mostly on KSM and the Bush years of trying to trace back to bin Laden, and the early parts of the Obama search. The third is when they finally got their breakthrough and found him, and detailing the raid. I don't think that qualifies as a spoiler given that it's actual history.

Ultimately, the story is consistent with other things I've seen (I watch way too many documentaries), but there's a STRONG CIA slant to this one. To a certain extent, that's natural since the hung for OBL was principally CIA, but there's shade being thrown on the military and political leaders from their perspectives, there's a little revisionism about 'enhanced interrogation', but as long as you bear in mind that this is the testimony from that CIA perspective, I don't think it's bad or distortionary.

Anytime you're getting info predominantly from one perspective, there's going to be some slant. The filmmaker probably could/should have sought out broader perspectives on some of those issues, but this isn't Michael Moore type stuff. Just a filmmaker who maybe needed to be 10% more self-aware about their biases, and the biases of their chosen sibjects and trying to counter them.

I saw this movie when I was a kid. I didn't remember anything about it other than that it was weird A. F. I recently came across it as an adult and wondered 'I wonder what adult-me will think about this?'

What I think is that this movie is the most insane and random assortment of plot points and ideas I can remember seeing in a long while. It has that class sci-fi vibe where all the effects are super-cheap, but I don't hold that against it.

What I do hold against it is that the plot is such a hodgepodge of random elements that you just wonder what's going on half the time. The characters are all so over the top and ridiculous that it's almost hard to categorize. And none of it is explained. It feels like this is the third movie in a trilogy and I missed the prequels.

Amazingly, this thing is CHOC full of recognizeable faces. It has a very 'swashbuckler' energy that embraces the camp and silliness. But even so, it fails to string it's disconnected scenes of chaos together in a way that feels cohesive. I was hoping for more...but I just can't give this a good grade.