Movie Review: Bob Odenkirk's assassin sequel ‘Nobody 2' fails to hit the mark
'You need to have happy memories,' he tells his wife and kids. Unfortunately, no one in the theater will have a happy memory — or maybe even recall that they saw this C-level offering — by the time it's over, mercifully after less than 90 minutes. The movie opens in theaters Friday.
Bob Odenkirk makes another awkward stab as an assassin-turned-nice-guy in a sequel that still isn't funny or stylish enough to be anything but 'John Wick Lite.' Is it a send-up? A riff? A new lane?
In a departure from this summer dominated by insanely larger-than-it-needs-to-be sequels — like 'M3GAN 2.0 ' and 'The Bad Guys 2' — 'Nobody 2' concentrates not on global destruction but at a threadbare amusement park, Plummerville. (Christopher Plummer's estate really should sue.)
Odenkirk's Hutch thinks he can reconnect with his doubtful kids and frustrated wife (a dutiful Connie Nielsen) by going to the same place he had so much fun when he was a young lad. But there, they accidentally uncover a corrupt town, a police force led by an unconvincing baddie in Colin Hanks and a deeply evil criminal syndicate. Time to get killing again, kids.
Director Timo Tjahjanto, taking over from Ilya Naishuller, abandons the more dark, noirish vibe of the original in favor of a more 'National Lampoon's Vacation' feeling, only if that was drenched in blood and amputations. There's even duck boats now, albeit with goons impaled by an anchor and buoy.
The lighter setting means we can see heads smashed into a pinball machine or a Whack-a-Mole game by an ordinary looking dad in a Hawaiian shirt. The violence escalates so fast that we are soon dealing with stacks of shrink-wrapped currency and huge oil drums helpfully labeled 'Explosive Material.'
The screenplay by a returning Derek Kolstad — and Aaron Rabin — seems to want to talk about violence as an inherent trait and how it can pass through generations. When Hutch's son gets into a brawl, dad is unhappy. 'There are other ways to handle things,' he says. 'You have to be better than your old man.'
Even the criminal organization head, who has Hutch working off a $30 million debt from the first movie, is unconvinced that his prized assassin can even stop killing. 'Nature always wins,' he tells Hutch.
'Nobody 2' draws from a rich mine of macho wish-fulfillment fantasy dug by the likes of Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. But too often, Odenkirk is stuck in a no-man's land between real action hero and comic relief without a punchline. Fans of the 2021 original will note echoes — like the duck boat fight mimicking the bus fight of the first movie and another scene in which currency is lit on fire.
The person having the best time seems to be Sharon Stone, who is an absolute psychotic in tailored men's clothes and slicked back hair as she pets a bulldog and stabs at people. 'Scorched earth,' she tells a flunky. 'No survivors.'
Christopher Lloyd makes a baffling cameo — he has a few quick scenes and then simply disappears — and RZA returns for a Japanese-inspired martial arts battle tacked on at the end that feels forced onto a peanuts-and-Cracker Jack movie.
'Nobody 2' climaxes in a sort of R-rated 'Home Alone,' where the good guys make deadly all the things we love about amusement parks or county fairs: The Ferris wheel is booby-trapped to hit you in the face, the ball pit has a tripwire to a landmine, the water slide has knives sticking out of it and the hall of mirrors is a way to confuse the thugs as they unload all their bullets. Happy summer, America.
Somebody, anybody, should drag Odenkirk away from this nobody franchise.
'Nobody 2,' a Universal Pictures release that's only in theaters Friday, is rated R for 'strong bloody violence, and language throughout.' Running time: 89 minutes. One star out of four.
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The trailer for Nobody 2 has an ear-worm song on its own soundtrack: Lindsay Buckingham's Holiday Road, utilized in the 1983 Chevy Chase comedy National Lampoon's Vacation. As it happens, the trailer, and indeed the movie, has a lot of the same plot dynamic: a father takes his wife, son and daughter on a trip to the vacation paradise of his youth, only to have his nostalgic dreams dashed at every turn. Of course, Nobody 2 is much more action movie than comedy, befitting its 2021 origins. The sleeper hit Nobody introduced us to Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk), a seemingly nebbishy guy revealed to be a master assassin when he is provoked by a humiliating home invasion. Allen Fraser / Universal Pictures From left, Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath, Bob Odenkirk, Christopher Lloyd and Connie Nielsen just want to relax during a family holiday. By the end of that movie, Hutch burned down his life to start anew. But the sequel sees him caught in a different kind of rat race. Owing money to the organization for whom he toiled, he once again submits to a life of violence, this time on a deadening, nine-to-five basis. Feeling adrift from his family once again, he gets the idea for a getaway to the tourist destination Plummerville, where as a child he once enjoyed rare summer bliss with his own father (Christopher Lloyd returns) and brother (RZA). But like Chevy Chase before him, Hutch is destined for disappointment when it emerges Plummerville is a hub of scum and villainy, ostensibly run by its mayor (John Ortiz) but really lorded over by a deeply corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks) in the employ of a deeply crazy crime boss named Lendina (Sharon Stone), who runs drugs and guns out of Plummerville with ruthless efficiency. Taking over as director from the first movie's Ilya Naishuller is Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto, a master of mayhem in his own right. Tjahjanto's previous films (see them on Netflix), The Night Comes for Us and The Shadow Strays are relentlessly downbeat, combining awesome fight scenes with chest-thumping melodrama. (No disrespect intended. They're both awesome bullet ballets.) The sequel at times feels bigger and certainly brighter, but Tjahjanto's participation notwithstanding, the film lacks the gravity of the former. Compare the obligatory one-man battle scene, with Hutch taking on a gang of thugs on a duck boat; it feels a little silly compared to the city bus scene in the first film, a self-contained gem of movie action. Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. Odenkirk continues his streak as a late-in-life action hero. He maintains a wry sense of humour, but he is never spoofy. He holds his action responsibilities as one does a sacred vow. Universal Pictures Bob Odenkirk returns as Hutch Mansell Stone is enjoyable. She was always an actress who excelled in broad, cartoony films such as Total Recall, Basic Instinct and The Quick and the Dead, yet could hold her own in more serious film, such as Casino. She is certainly in cartoony mode here, but seeing her sinking her teeth into a role of such violent perversity is the most nostalgic element of the film. nnn Nobody 2 was shot in and around Winnipeg just a year ago, so expect a few home movie thrills, including a scene shot at the hot dog joint Skinners and various Winnipeg Beach locations. And keep your eyes out for local acting talent including Rodrigo Beilfuss as Ortiz's dad (in flashback) and a nearly unrecognizable Marina Stephenson Kerr as a magnificently disreputable-looking carnie. Randall KingReporter In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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'My goal is Jackie Chan's 'Police Story,'' Odenkirk says, sipping an iced tea before a day of promotion obligations. 'It exists to be funny. The disconnect is the lack of irony. Hutch has to mean it.' Odenkirk's unlikely but sincere turn into Keanu Reeves territory has, in a way, only illuminated the rage that bubbled throughout his comedy. Chatting casually but intensely, Odenkirk explained how all of these iterations of him make sense — and how 'Nobody' might have even saved his life. AP: Your friends in comedy, have they been funny about you as an action hero? ODENKIRK: The whole time I was training I was thinking: They're not going to make this movie, and I'm getting free exercise training. The second thing I was thinking: If they make this movie, David Cross, Conan O'Brien, Adam Sandler, David Spade, these people are going to see me do this thing and go, 'Really?' It's just so fundamentally discordant. I could have asked for more comedy in the first one. And I didn't want that. I wanted to either make a real action movie — which would blow my friends' minds — or don't do it at all. If you're just going to ridicule the form, don't do it. Or just do 'Naked Gun,' which is super fun, too. I thought the funnier thing — what I did — was to do it. That's a joke on a cosmic scale. I'm literally pranking the universe. I am, right? That's the big joke. Now, what do I do with it? That's the question. AP: With the 'Nobody' movies and your recent Broadway experience, you've set a high bar for surprising people with what you're capable of. ODENKIRK: I thought about the character of Saul. He never quits. He gets pushed around. He's clever. He's in a spot and he has to think of a way out. That's an action character. While it's true that it feels like, 'Oh, boy, you went so far away.' I didn't really go that far away. It's one step. It's a big step. Everything else is in Saul. I did think that for people who know my comedy, this is going to be a hard sell. But that's not that many people. That's a cult group. AP: And it might not be that hard of a sell to your comedy fans, either. The lie detector 'Mr. Show' sketch, in which you calmly confess to outlandish things, has a similar what's-under-the-surface quality like the 'Nobody' movies. ODENKIRK: (Laughs) Yeah, yes. AP: Maybe the most relevant sketch, though, is the one where you and David Cross playtough guys who bump into each other in a bar and then remained locked in mutual animosity through their lives, even through marriage. 'Nobody 2' kicks off with a similar encounter. ODENKIRK: It's a tap on the shoulder that sets this whole thing off. He agrees to leave. Then this little tap happens. Then he leaves. He's outside. He can keep walking, which is what you would do. You'd get home and tell your wife, 'That guy tapped her on the back of the head.' It would just sit with you forever. The whole thing could have been avoided if it wasn't for who Hutch is, which is a person who allows himself to go crazy. AP: Allowing yourself to go crazy isn't a radically different impulse in comedy. Did you always feel like rage or anger was fueling some of the funniest things you did? ODENKIRK: For sure. I remember sitting with David Cross in the morning. We would start our time at 'Mr. Show' trying to generate ideas, sitting around with the paper. Oftentimes, it was: 'This really pisses me off,' or 'Look at this stupid thing.' So, yeah, frustration, anger, those are the very raw materials of comedy. AP: You're just funneling that rage into a different place. ODENKIRK: Life conjures up this rage in you, but there is no place that deserves it. In the first film, the first place he goes to exact revenge, he realizes all these people have nothing, they don't deserve it. In the second film, he goes after this guy and he's like, 'I'm under her thumb.' It's really not something you're supposed to do in an action movie, and I love that. You don't just get to find a bad guy around the corner. You've got to go looking. AP: You've said you'd like to do a third one that ends with Hutch having nothing. ODENKIRK: Yeah, the moral would be that everything he loves is gone. He burned everything he loved. We let him get away with it because the movie is an entertainment and it's meant to tell you: Yes, you can let go of your rage in this magical world. But in the end, I would think that it's an addiction. And he does want to do it. He does want to have a go, and so does every guy. That's why we have movies. And that's why we have boxing matches. AP: How much credit do you give these movies for saving your life? After you had a heart attack in 2021 on the set of 'Better Call Saul,' you attributed your narrow survival to your 'Nobody' training. ODENKIRK: When I had my EKG, where you can see the heart, the doctor explained that I had almost no scarring from that incident. And that's kind of weird because of how long that incident went on and how drastic it was. They were like: 'This should all be scar tissue, and there's none.' They said that's because these other veins are bigger than we're used to seeing, and that's from all the exercise you've been doing. And, dude, I did a lot. I went from a comedy writer who exercised just by riding a bike three or four times a week to the action I did in those movies. AP: You told Marc Maron you saw no white light and tongue-in-cheek advised him to 'go for the money.' ODENKIRK: Well, I got nothing. Nothing. I did talk to my family the next day. I woke up the next day around 1:30 and talked to my wife and kids. I was talking to people for the next week, and I don't remember any of it, or the day that it happened. AP: But did the experience change you? ODENKIRK: (Long pause) It's a big component of my thinking about who I am and what I want to do with myself and my time. The thing that's driven me the most in my life is a sense of responsibility. Not just like, 'Oh, I have kids. I have to make money and take care of them.' But, like, responsibility to the universe. 'Oh, they'll let you do this action movie.' Well, then you better do a f—— great job. 'They want you do 'Better Call Saul.'' Well, let's go. The universe is saying: You can do this. And you owe that opportunity that's so unjustified and magical. I just feel responsibility almost too readily. But the heart attack, however you want to feel about everybody's expectations of you, I mean, you're going to be gone. The world's going to go on without you, just fine. So I don't know, man. Yeah, you've got to come through for people. But you've also got a lot of freedom to invite who you want to be.
