By waiting five years to produce a sequel to The Old Guard, which found a respectable amount of applause and eyeballs during the COVID-19 summer of 2020, Netflix isn’t exactly striking the iron while it’s hot. Then again, five years is just a drop in the ocean for our main characters, their lifespans exceeding several millennia. But for us mere mortals, it’s more like a bucket of water in a kiddie pool. The cobwebs have to be dusted off in the memory bank, and an interest in the continuation of an overarching story has to be rekindled. The Old Guard 2 doesn’t accomplish either of those tasks very well, making the wait just that much more egregious.

Only six months have passed since the events of the first film, and Andy’s (Charlize Theron) team is still doing the unappreciated dirty work of keeping humanity safe from themselves. They take out the worst of the worst, which really just means the generic Eastern European mobster we see in the opening set piece. Subbing in for the outgoing Gina Prince-Bythewood is director Victoria Mahoney, who doesn’t make a great first impression. The action is overedited and frenzied, leaving all of the physicality to feel a bit generic.

Upping the stakes from the first film’s pharmaceutical villain is an equally immortal opponent in Discord (Uma Thurman). She’s just rescued Andy’s immortal soulmate Quynh (Veronica Ngo) from her five-century imprisonment at the bottom of the ocean, something that Andy failed to do. Discord has a Magneto-mindset to the whole immortals vs. humans debate, and she doesn’t take kindly to Andy continually protecting those who have hindered the progress of immortals.

The proposition of Furiosa fighting The Bride is enough to immediately sell a movie. Theron and Thurman have been at the forefront of modern action, with their physicality and screen presence being unmatched. The trouble is that it takes an awfully long time to get to the good part, which isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be either. This is a film that thinks that switching locations is the same as doing something. It hopscotches between Paris, South Korea, Croatia, and Indonesia without much fanfare. The same goes for the flashbacks to illustrate the centuries-spanning backstories. A brief moment of visual imagination comes when Andy walks down a Parisian street, the memories across generations flooding throughout the background.

There’s still the problem that none of these characters can die, except for Andy, since she lost her immortality at the end of the previous film. Similar to Deadpool, critical injuries are more of an inconvenience. Broken legs snap back, and bullet holes sew themselves up in seconds. Some contrivances are needed for consequences to be injected into the action. The extremely overqualified Henry Golding and Chiwetel Ejiofor are there to add a bit of gravitas to their sole responsibilities of explaining the rules.

And for the second time in as many films, there isn’t so much a conclusion to this story, but a setup for what’s to come next. It feels like a mini-miracle that we even got this movie, so doubling down for another feels like a foolhardy gamble. I really hope it pays off, because I’m starting to consider pulling out my investment.