Tired, try-hard and boring

With the French bloke out, it's all females and their gay best friends.

The Noriko - sorry, Quynh - subplot fares barely better. Leaves some room for secondary character to breathe, which they don't really do. Except Booker. Schoenaerts is clutch.

Lots of sudden cuts in the first part, lots of exotic locales.
This movie felt to me as though it was trying real hard to whip itself into a good mood.
Trying - and failing - to establish a lore. The result is muddled, conflicts with the previous movie, and builds nothing.
In that way, it really does emulate the Highlander movies (although there can be only one).
I suspect Rucka's also trying to draw from Vampire the Masquerade lore, in an attempt to bolster his flagging creativity. Metuselah and stuff.


Thurman has grown old. Unkindly so. Especially compared to Theron, who's only 5 years her junior. And she's less than a decade older than Ngo. She still has that effortless elegance, and that genial charm, but not that unexpected beauty. Still a top notch actress, though.

Theron works hard to carry the movie. She's an excellent actress, but still sluggish in fight scenes. Atomic Blonde worked because the choreography was tactical, not physical. And she was younger.
Layne is still young. Meaning she's either badly coordinated, or just lazy with her training.


As a note, the "walking through the ghosts of the past" scene is just brilliant. A minute of grace in an unispired movie.
The rest is trudging through the motion. Anybody with two brain cells knows what is going to happen. But it comes slowly.


Also, this opus is less aggressively anti-male and anti-white than the previous. Studios must be starting to realize which side of the toast is buttered. Maybe they shouldn't grow too lucid, lest they realize most of them are the walking dead.

All-in-all, not bad, just tepid and directionless. Oh wait, this means bad.
Not sure the third movie this is desperately trying to build up to will be made.