Directed by: Yuen Woo-ping, one of the greatest martial arts directors alive
This isn't the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that swept the Oscars in 2000, made record-breaking amounts of money, and showed American audiences the power of the historical kung fu epic WuXia genre for the first time.
This is the direct-to-DVD-quality sequel that was released on Netflix with one character from the first film and a bunch of hasty reshuffles to make a new setting. It lacks the scale, the authenticity, and the erudite quality that made the first one so obviously great, and basically just feels like a cash grab.
But it is pretty good.
Honestly, I like it better than the first one. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but the pacing and the story and half the characters in the original just didn't land with me. This one isn't perfect, but it's got a good sense of action, likable characters, and a final battle with some legit twists. It retcons the first one a little, but honestly in a way that creates a happier ending, so I don't really mind.
This film is an hour and forty minutes, it's originally English (with dubs in Mandarin) so you feel more at home, and it doesn't have any of the gratuitous blood or violence that a lot of direct-to-DVD films have. It's not gonna win any Oscars, but it's a decent bit of action that'll be cool to watch. The Old Guard was the kind of direct-to-DVD film that I'd have liked as a kid 'cause I didn't know better, but this is a direct-to-DVD film that I'd have liked 'cause it had genuinely good stuff in it. Recommend
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