The Wild New Action Thriller So Unhinged, It's Resurrecting A Canceled Genre
The Cancellation Of Gonzo Action Movies
If you've never heard the term 'gonzo action movie' before, that makes sense. Hollywood stopped making them after an early, blood-soaked boom in the style during the early 2000s.
That gonzo renaissance happened partly due to successes like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings. They had proven there was huge value in giving auteur filmmakers buckets of money and letting them make whatever they wanted, however they wanted, and that formula was being tested on everyone and everything. Some of those filmmakers wanted to make over-the-top action movies.
At the same time, the internet had created a new cadre of independent online film communities and critics. Young voices with sudden influence who were ready to watch and champion the kinds of movies old school snobbery would have sneered at.
This combination of events is how that era ended up with the Judd Apatow-led explosion in ultra-offensive, ultra-funny Rated R comedy. It's how we got all kinds of strange and interesting sci-fi and drama, as directors got the backing they needed to push boundaries. It's also how we got Jason Statham.
Statham is now a household name, but he was an up-and-comer back then. He was a cult favorite first, and his popularity as an on-screen ass kicker grew based on his willingness to top-line movies of the wildest and most violent variety.
Jason Statham was the king of gonzo action movies. His films were over the top and free of restraint. They were violent at John Wick-level but without any self-seriousness and ten times the gratuitousness. Sometimes, they were all that and also really silly.
Statham's Crank movies may have been the pinnacle of that gonzo action style, but other stars were dabbling in it too. Clive Owen's Shoot 'Em Up was like a live-action, R-rated Looney Tunes. And Nic Cage made a Ghost Rider sequel that featured a scene in which he pees fire on the film's screen, just for the hell of it.
And then it all went away. Society tightened up. Independent publishers were buried as old media corporations poured pressure and money into the internet to supplant them. Movies and filmmakers began feeling leveraged to push a specific message as cancel culture activists issued threats. It was no longer safe to take risks.
The effect of this was most obviously seen in comedy. In 2017, Daddy's Home 2 was released, and that would be Hollywood's last major comedy film released in theaters for the next eight years.
Comedy wasn't the only casualty. This was no longer an environment where Jason Statham could make an action movie in which he had to engage in either sex or murder every ten minutes to live. Yes, that is the plot of Crank, if you haven't seen it.
Now it's all coming back. 2025 saw the return of comedy with The Naked Gun, and at the same time, unhinged R-rated gonzo action movies are making a comeback too. 2022 saw the release of the Violent Night, 2023 gave us Cocaine Bear, and now here's Nobody 2.
Nobody 2 Sets Silly On Fire And Rips Its Legs Off
Nobody 2 gets progressively more ridiculous as it goes on, until our hero is planting land mines in the ball pit at an amusement park and engaging in a machine gun firefight while sliding down a water slide.
There's a wolf, a black ninja, Doc Brown with a Gatling gun, and Sharon Stone giving one of the most unhinged villain performances I've ever seen on screen in anything. Imagine if Tom Cruise's Les Grossman character from Tropic Thunder (another successful 2000s experiment in excess) decided to become a psychotic killer, and you'd have the basic genesis of Stone's Lendina. She's even got the dance moves.
It's all anchored by the most unlikely action star, 62-year-old Bob Odenkirk in jorts and a sensible polo shirt.
If there's a flaw in Nobody 2's madness, it's probably Odenkirk, who isn't all that great at pulling off some of the stunts. The movie does its best to turn him into John Wick, and the fight choreography is tremendous; he's just not always up to selling it at his near-retirement age.
It's forgivable because Odenkirk's aw-shucks I'm-a-nobody persona is a significant component in what makes the movie fun. And besides, Nobody 2 isn't asking you to take it seriously.
Gonzo action movies are back and this time, I hope they're here to stay.
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
For a ‘Twisted Tale,' Amanda Knox and Grace Van Patten Became One
As the title character of the mini-series 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,' the actress Grace Van Patten had to convincingly embody a highly examined figure at the center of a real-life legal drama followed by millions. Even more daunting, she had to do it in front of Amanda Knox herself, an executive producer. Those close to Knox were stunned by the results. 'Grace, I haven't told you this yet — when they see you play me, they get chills,' Knox told Van Patten during a conversation with The New York Times last week. 'You just did it, and they were like, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.'' Van Patten gasped in response. 'It was some fusion that happened,' she said. 'Because a lot of it felt very subconscious to me.' The eight-part series debuts on Hulu on Wednesday. The chills were inspired, Knox said, partly by Van Patten nailing her personality quirks: her occasionally singsong voice, the snort in her laugh, the cha-cha in her step. These behaviors and others became ammunition for Italian prosecutors and the global tabloid machine during Knox's highly publicized trial for the 2007 sexual assault and murder of Meredith Kercher. Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student and one of Knox's three roommates, was found dead from a knife attack in the flat they shared in Perugia, Italy. Knox, a 20-year-old Seattle native who was studying there, and Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend of about a week, were arrested and imprisoned just days after Kercher was found. In 2009, both were convicted of the killing, with Amanda sentenced to 26 years and Sollecito to 25 years. In 2011, the ruling was overturned, and Knox returned to the United States. Then in 2014, Knox and Sollecito (played by Giuseppe Domenico in the series) were re-convicted of murder, a conviction that was overturned in 2015, ending the nearly decade-long saga. Another man, Rudy Guede, was convicted separately of the murder in 2008 and was released from prison in 2021, after serving 13 years of a 16-year sentence. (Guede's original 30-year sentence was reduced on appeal.) A separate slander conviction for Knox was upheld earlier this year. She had implicated Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar where she had worked, and herself in a confession made under duress, which she had tried to withdraw almost immediately. (Lumumba was in jail about two weeks as a result.) In all, Knox spent nearly four years in an Italian prison. The mini-series recreates this legal roller coaster in an unconventional style. It is a prison drama, a courtroom drama, a love story and an anxious horror tale. And it is largely in Italian. Van Patten ('Nine Perfect Strangers,' 'Tell Me Lies') plays Knox from her 20s, when she was full of 'whimsy and optimism and innocence,' as Knox put it, into her mid-30s, when Knox was defined more by 'trauma and hauntedness and determination.' 'We asked her to play the best experiences of my life and the worst experiences of life,' said Knox, now 38. 'We asked her to do it in English and Italian.' The series also depicts Knox's decision, in 2022, to return to Italy to confront Giuliano Mignini, her nemesis during and after the trial. Mignini, the lead Italian prosecutor, had fixated on and promoted the image of Knox as a conniving, sex-crazed murderer. (He compared Knox to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, during the proceedings.) Tabloid headlines smeared her as 'Foxy Knoxy,' a childhood nickname lifted from her Myspace page. Onscreen, Mignini (Francesco Acquaroli) is a relentless figure, a smug monster to be dreaded. Knox's trip to Italy to face (and ultimately befriend) the prosecutor is used as a framing device in the series. 'This is not a show about the worst experience of someone's life,' Knox said. 'This is the show of a person's choice to find closure on their own terms and to reclaim a sense of agency in their own life after that agency has been stolen from them.' To prepare to play Knox, Van Patten had numerous video chats with her and spent time in Los Angeles with Knox and her two children. Knox was also frequently on set during production. It all helped the actress understand the complex emotions involved in such a nightmarish experience. 'I was able to go to those places because of how deeply open Amanda was and how deeply vulnerable she was with me,' Van Patten said. An interrogation scene, in which Knox is mentally and physically tormented by a team of Italian officials, was particularly intense to film, Van Patten said. (Watching Knox spiral and give way under what amounts to psychological torture is brutal viewing.) Van Patten was learning Italian throughout filming, but the show was largely shot sequentially, and those early scenes captured authentic desperation. 'I tried not to learn the other people's lines as much as I could so that I was in a state of confusion,' she said. Knox said the themes of perception and miscommunication are fundamental to the story. 'That clash of perspectives and cultures and language, and the tension there, that's the beauty of drama and it's the beauty of reality,' she said. 'It is what makes this so psychologically and emotionally complex.' Kercher (Rhianne Barreto) is mostly seen in flashbacks of quiet, playful moments of friendship between her and Knox. The limited screen time reflects real life, in which the media circus around Knox and Sollecito overshadowed Kercher's brutal death. Last year, Stephanie Kercher, Meredith's sister, told The Guardian that she found it 'difficult to understand' what purpose the mini-series would serve. 'Meredith will always be remembered for her own fight for life, and yet in her absence, her love and personality continues to shine,' she said. 'The Twisted Tale' was created by K.J. Steinberg ('This Is Us'), and executive producers included Monica Lewinsky; Knox's husband, Christopher Robinson; and Warren Littlefield ('The Handmaid's Tale'). It was Lewinsky who first approached Knox about dramatizing her experiences. In 2021, Lewinsky worked to reframe her own story as a producer on the FX series 'Impeachment,' about her relationship with former President Bill Clinton when she was a 22-year-old intern and the fallout from it. Lewinsky knows 'deep in her bones what it feels like to have a bad experience, the worst experience of her life, used to diminish her and the turning of her into a punchline,' Knox said. 'She has been such a trailblazer in the mission of refusing to be squashed, refusing to be limited.' 'I was really moved by how open people were to me,' Knox said of her collaborators. 'I felt supported not just as a source but as a storyteller in my own right.' Knox said coverage of her was informed and shaped by persistent cultural messaging that 'women are either sluts or virgins, and that they all secretly hate each other and would murder each other if they had the chance,' she said. She believes younger generations are more likely to scrutinize reporting and demand more nuance than the public did during her trial. Still, Knox said she was initially reluctant to saddle Van Patten, 28, with 'this baggage that I have been carrying around my entire adult life.' 'In the same way that I didn't want the dark shadow of being the girl accused of murder passed on to my daughter,' Knox said, 'I didn't want that to pass on to Grace.' Van Patten had few preconceived ideas about Knox's story. She was a child when it happened and first learned about the case in the 2016 documentary 'Amanda Knox,' which included interviews with Knox, Sollecito and Mignini, among others. 'The show gives everyone the opportunity to understand it more and to form an opinion based on facts, and not what they were being fed at the time,' Van Patten said. 'She was just a 20-year-old girl going through this.'
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
Anticipating Taylor Swift's ‘The Life of a Showgirl'
Taylor Swift's announcement last week that she would release her 12th original studio album, 'The Life of a Showgirl,' was interesting on multiple levels. First, the details of the music itself: Swift said the album's 12 tracks were made entirely with Max Martin and Shellback, two producers responsible for some of her biggest pop hits from albums like 'Red' and '1989.' (Swift said she told Martin, 'I want to be as proud of an album as I am of the Eras Tour and for the same reasons.') Second, the medium in which she made the announcement: a two-hour video podcast with her boyfriend, the football star Travis Kelce, and his brother Jason, on their show 'New Heights.' On Popcast, the hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli break down the prolific pop superstar's motivations, both for her latest musical pivot and her decision to do a rare interview (with notable safeguards). Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show's Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@ Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
The Passionate Partnership of Two ‘It' Choreographers
In a rehearsal studio at Juilliard on a sunlit afternoon, multiple small dramas were unfolding in quick succession. Dancers draped and corkscrewed around each other as they wrestled through a series of fraught, unsettled duets. One extended an arm, and a partner pressed her forehead urgently into its upturned wrist. Another couple's simmering tango bubbled over into a quarrel, with punches mimed in time to a Brahms piano trio. Each pair of dancers seemed both desperate and unable to hold on to each other. The choreographer, Bobbi Jene Smith, stopped the music. As the dancers panted and sipped water, one cocked an eyebrow and asked, 'So — it's about abandonment?' Smith chuckled. 'Sure, abandonment,' she said. 'And,' she paused, 'slippery fish.' Though delivered like a joke, the comment held a truth about the dances Smith creates with Or Schraiber, her partner on and offstage. Nearly everything they make — including this latest work, 'Seven Scenes,' which has its premiere at Little Island on Aug. 22 and runs through Aug. 28 — hinges on an evocative, slippery-fish ambiguity. Their dreamlike montages are often turbulent and disorienting, but can also feel unnervingly familiar. 'I think we're always trying to make the invisible visible,' Smith said in an interview this month after the rehearsal, 'to expose something that is true, but deep inside.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
