Rating: R | Runtime: 107 minutes
Release Date: July 2nd, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Netflix
Director(s): Victoria Mahoney
Writer(s): Greg Rucka and Sarah L. Walker / Greg Rucka (story) / Greg Rucka & Leandro Fernandez (graphic novel series)

Sometimes quick is better than subtle.

Here’s a ton of lore to pretend like we have a semblance of a plot despite really just needing to burn tens of millions of dollars for our shell game of a studio’s implausibly backwards financial system.

Let’s bring the whole cast back, integrate a new famous face as the villain with only two minutes of exposition before expecting the audience to care about her place in the story (as well as an out of nowhere ally just as thinly drawn for balance), and slow down the hand-to-hand combat so far that it’ll appear as though we ran out of time and needed to edit in rehearsal footage. Undercrank the film or something!

A wild step down from its predecessor in quality, purpose, and especially continuity. ‘Cause Andy’s first knife wound healed just fine. It was the gunshot that caused a problem. Really makes you wonder about the conjunction use between Greg Rucka “and” Sarah L. Walker’s names denoting a rewrite. Was his script so bad that this barely half-of-a-film result was the best they could salvage? Or was this stinker the product of a complete retool that legally demanded Rucka’s credit remain regardless? Not great either way.

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(L-R) KiKi Layne as Nile and Charlize Theron as Andy in THE OLD GUARD 2. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025