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Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nobody 2 Review: Bob Odenkirk's Violent Vacation
Hutch Mansell might be on vacation, but in Nobody 2, trouble clearly didn't get the memo. It's been four years since Bob Odenkirk got his big break as an action hero in the 2021 film Nobody. This sequel once again follows Hutch (Odenkirk), now fully embracing waking up every day and choosing violence. As this wears on his marriage to Becca (Connie Nielsen), he takes his family, including his wife, dad, son, and daughter on a vacation. But he soon finds himself taking on new foes in a fun action-packed sequel that proves that Odenkirk can still kick ass at 62. The first Nobody was written by Derek Kolstad, best known for creating the John Wick movies. In many ways, that first movie felt like an early draft of Wick; not as good, but still very entertaining. This sequel has Timo Tjahjanto taking over directorial responsibilities from Ilya Naishuller. Despite Naishuller's strong directorial work, Tjahjanto was a strong pick for this series. Those (like me) familiar with Tjahjanto's work on action thrillers like Headshot and The Night Comes For Us know that he can direct violence. And if there's anything an action movie like Nobody 2 is going to offer, it's tons of splatter-ific glory. A blood-soaked vacation of violence is what you can expect going into this movie. Much like The Naked Gun, this is the perfect movie to watch if you want to get out of the summer heat and have some fun under the air conditioning of a movie theater for 89 minutes. It's a short, breezy actioner that doesn't overstay its welcome and delivers on all the laughs, punches, guns, and explosions you can expect from a movie that knows exactly what it is and embraces it at every turn. Like the first movie, you can tell Odenkirk is doing the majority of his stunts himself. It's a trend that we've been seeing a lot lately. If actors like Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, and Ana de Armas are making long wide takes featuring their face and their stunts, other actors are going to want to avoid falling by the wayside. So with Nobody 2, it's action o'clock, and this movie has tons of it. Tjahjanto films everything quite well, not relying much on wides, but always keeping the camera movement dynamic so that we can feel how hard those hits are. People who frequented the movie theater in the 80s and 90s will be happy to see familiar faces like Christopher Lloyd and Sharon Stone in this movie, as they're both having a lot of fun. Lloyd is entertaining as the slightly crazy grandpa, and Stone gets to chew up the scenery as the villain, Lendina. Is she a great villain? No. She only shows up in the latter half of the movie and doesn't have much to do that's memorable. You can tell Stone read the character description as 'evil villain' and understood the assignment, cranking it up to the max and making an evil character. She's not multi-dimensional, but she didn't have to be. That's the thing with action movies like Nobody 2. People show up for the action, not for the script. As long as an action film's script isn't outwardly bad, audiences don't really care. What matters is the most important question: Are you having a good time? This movie gives you a good time and a script that's nothing to write home about. Nobody 2 won't be winning any awards for its screenwriting. The dialogue and the character moments exist solely because they have to. Great writing is nowhere to be found in this movie, but that's not what you're here for. You're here to watch guns go bang and explosions go boom. That's what I wanted too. And that's what I got. So I'll forgive Nobody 2 for being completely unremarkable in the script department. We have some story beats, but for the most part, the script is nothing more than a thin rope that holds a string of action sequences together. We know who the good guys are, and we know who the bad guys are. All that's left to do is watch them fight. There's tons of mileage out of seeing Odenkirk punch bad guys in the face. Action movies can be cathartic in that weird sort of way. Watching bad people get bloodied and bruised is a pastime many will never get sick of. The best part of Nobody 2? The finale. One of the novelties of this movie is the juxtaposition of a fun family vacation with a violent crime-filled narrative. The town Hutch takes his family to has a lot of crime going on, and part of the joy is the fact that Hutch can't seem to hold himself back from intervening. The last 30 minutes are a delight. A carnival of carnage featuring ball pits, halls of mirrors, and water slides turned deadly. A conveyor belt of stunt performers and practical effects, with our heroes ripping through them all. This movie amps things up a bit from the original, even if the final result is a sequel that doesn't do anything mind-blowing, but gets the job done. Turns out, the only thing more dangerous than Hutch with a gun is Hutch trying to relax. SCORE: 7/10 As ComingSoon's review policy explains, a score of 7 equates to 'Good.' A successful piece of entertainment that is worth checking out, but it may not appeal to everyone. Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Nobody 2 review. The post Nobody 2 Review: Bob Odenkirk's Violent Vacation appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Nobody 2' is all about making memories, one body at a time
Presumably there are at least a few schlubby dads in this nation of 340 million whose bone-deep melancholy and chronic distraction from their families is not the natural by-product of having accrued a triple-digit body count during a decades-long career as a covert super-assassin. If there are, the makers of 'Nobody 2,' the new Bob Odenkirk action thriller — and what a gloriously odd sequence of words that still is — don't want to know. Those makers include 'John Wick' and 'Nobody' scribe Derek Kolstad (working here with co-writer Aaron Rabin) and director Timo Tjahjanto, a German Indonesian action auteur in his English-language debut. More broadly, 'Nobody 2,' a sequel to the 2021 Odenkirk-starring sleeper 'Nobody,' is another product of the fight-centric production company 87North, which made a big, bloody splash with 'John Wick' 11 years ago and has been offering up minor, nay, minute variations on that movie's super-killer-coaxed-from-retirement premise ever since. Their films are notable for starring actors whose Very Particular Set of Skills are not limited to the shoot-'em-up genre — your Keanus, your Brads, your Ke Huy Quans — and their hit rate is decidedly mixed. 'Love Hurts,' their good-faith effort to build a franchise around the more than deserving Mr. Quan earlier this year, was particularly dire. There was a time when dinosaurs like Clint and Arnold and Sly plotted, with variable degrees of success, to graduate from action flicks and be taken seriously. That all changed early on in the Obama years, when Oscar-player all-rounders like Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, and Liam Neeson decided, a couple of decades into their careers, that what they really wanted was to take a long detour into the throat-punching game. But even in such an environment, Odenkirk's admirably eclectic résumé makes him a uniquely left-field candidate. Discarding his many Emmy nominations for his role on 'Breaking Bad' and 'Better Call Saul,' Odenkirk must be the only former off-camera 'Saturday Night Live' writer to headline an action franchise more than 30 years later. This spring, his Broadway debut as sad-sack salesman Shelley Levene in a revival of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' earned him a Tony Award nomination. Maybe if the yeggs and crooked lawmen he takes on 'Nobody 2' knew about all that, they wouldn't be in such a hurry to bludgeon, stab, and/or shoot him. The setup this time around is that Odenkirk's Hutch, sensing that spouse Becca (played by Connie Nielsen) is losing patience with his late nights and absences from their kids' sporting events, proposes a family getaway to a decaying theme park/resort in the fictitious upper Midwestern everytown of Peary County, Wis., the one place his father, played again by Christopher Lloyd, who looks roughly 10 minutes older than he did 'Back to the Future' 40 years ago, took him on a holiday when he was a kid. 'We're making memories,' Hutch tells his household, sounding more like he's trying to sell himself on the idea than to convince them. Despite his deep ties to the criminal underworld, Hutch is unaware that the town is effectively Sodom and Gomorrah making a halfhearted attempt to pass itself off as Mayberry. Its org chart of creeps spans from Colin Hanks's crooked sheriff to John Ortiz's figurehead crime lord, to the one thug to rule them all — Sharon Stone! Given her humble beginnings in this genre, playing truly thankless roles like Steven Seagal's wife in 'Above the Law' (1988), it's a delight to see Stone go full ham here. Like Orson Welles in 'The Third Man,' she gets to flex by delaying her entrance until more than halfway through the picture, which, by the way, runs an anachronistically svelte 89 minutes. No one tries to charge her with smoking, but Hutch does take violent exception to her threatening his kids. Your ability to enjoy 'Nobody 2' will hang entirely upon how much nourishment and/or diversion you can wring from small cinematic pleasures: Odenkirk's gift for making a line like 'The cops over here — they're in league with the big syndicate' sound like something a human might say, for example. Or the fact that Tjahjanto or his music supervisor scored a hand-to-hand fight on a boat with a brass band instrumental of 'When the Saints Go Marching In,' a funny needle drop in a movie that's otherwise full of rote ones. Or the way the movie joins the rarefied company of the third 'Die Hard' and the second 'Captain America' by making an impressive entry in the Elevator Fight Scene Hall of Fame. You also get a fun sequence in which Hutch and an unexpected ally booby-trap the theme park for a showdown with Sharon and the Family Stone — placing land mines in the ball pit and that sort of thing. Best of all, RZA returns as Hutch's brother, and this time he gets to do a sort of 60-second version of the samurai epic the Wu-Tang Clan front man has always wanted to make. Making memories it ain't. But making 89 minutes of your life disappear almost painlessly has its place, too. R. At area theaters. Pervasive tooth dislodging, digit severing violence and profanity.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Nobody 2 review – Bob Odenkirk's suburban tough guy beats action sequel into submission
Bob Odenkirk's unlikely new career journey as a kickass tough guy continues in this pretty formulaic and forgettable sequel to the amusing original hit, which first showed us Hutch (Odenkirk), an apparent suburban nobody with wife-plus-kids who keeps forgetting to put the garbage out in time – then from nowhere busts out some serious fight moves. This sequel from Indonesian action director Timo Tjahjanto, co-written by the writer of the original, Derek Kolstad, really doesn't have much of the humour and the storytelling chutzpah of the first film. But what it does have, inevitably, are endless gonzo fight sequences in which Hutch is unfairly matched against half a dozen or so humongous goons, and winds up reducing these bullies to cat litter. There was a big scene in the first film set on a bus, and it seems to have become the Nobody franchise's USP. The idea now is that Hutch is still working as an assassin but neglecting his family, so he insists on taking them all on a summer break to a cheesy vacation resort with a goofy water slide and silly cabins – a place to which his dad, the lovably cantankerous grandpa played by Christopher Lloyd, who comes along too – once took him when he was a kid. Inevitably Hutch gets involved with local bad guys, including a corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks) and sadistically mean crime boss Lendina, played by Sharon Stone. And so the six-against-one punch-ups continue, to diminishing effect, with a massive war-zone-style finale in a funfair. The film does contrive to produce a dog for Hutch at the film's beginning and end, in an obvious attempt to pump up his family-guy relatability. Odenkirk sells it conscientiously enough, although his fans may still prefer to remember his harassed lawyer in TV's Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, or his psychotherapist in Arrested Development. Nobody 2 is out on 14 August in Australia, and on 15 August in the UK and US.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Nobody 2 review – Bob Odenkirk's suburban tough guy beats action sequel into submission
Bob Odenkirk's unlikely new career journey as a kickass tough guy continues in this pretty formulaic and forgettable sequel to the amusing original hit, which first showed us Hutch (Odenkirk), an apparent suburban nobody with wife-plus-kids who keeps forgetting to put the garbage out in time – then from nowhere busts out some serious fight moves. This sequel from Indonesian action director Timo Tjahjanto, co-written by the writer of the original, Derek Kolstad, really doesn't have much of the humour and the storytelling chutzpah of the first film. But what it does have, inevitably, are endless gonzo fight sequences in which Hutch is unfairly matched against half a dozen or so humongous goons, and winds up reducing these bullies to cat litter. There was a big scene in the first film set on a bus, and it seems to have become the Nobody franchise's USP. The idea now is that Hutch is still working as an assassin but neglecting his family, so he insists on taking them all on a summer break to a cheesy vacation resort with a goofy water slide and silly cabins – a place to which his dad, the lovably cantankerous grandpa played by Christopher Lloyd, who comes along too – once took him when he was a kid. Inevitably Hutch gets involved with local bad guys, including a corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks) and sadistically mean crime boss Lendina, played by Sharon Stone. And so the six-against-one punch-ups continue, to diminishing effect, with a massive war-zone-style finale in a funfair. The film does contrive to produce a dog for Hutch at the film's beginning and end, in an obvious attempt to pump up his family-guy relatability. Odenkirk sells it conscientiously enough, although his fans may still prefer to remember his harassed lawyer in TV's Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, or his psychotherapist in Arrested Development. Nobody 2 is out on 14 August in Australia, and on 15 August in the UK and US.
Geek Tyrant
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
SPLINTER CELL Series Creator Derek Kolstad Explains Why Sam Fisher Is 'Not the Best' — GeekTyrant
Netflix's upcoming animated series Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is bringing back stealth icon Sam Fisher, but not exactly the way longtime fans might expect. Series creator Derek Kolstad, the writer behind John Wick and Nobody , recently opened up about his approach to the character, and he doesn't see Sam Fisher as ultimate ghost operative. Kolstad told Den of Geek: 'One of the things that I like about Sam Fisher, John Wick, and Hutch Mansell [from Nobody] is that, yes, they're pretty badass at what they do but, more importantly, they're not the best. They get beat up.' That an interesting outlook considering Fisher's reputation as one of gaming's most elite covert agents, but Kolstad seems intent on making him more grounded and vulnerable. This means that Deathwatch might lean toward a grittier, hands-on style similar to Splinter Cell: Conviction , rather than the purely shadow-driven approach from the original trilogy. In the early games, Fisher was a master of infiltration, relying on high-tech gadgets and his iconic night vision goggles to ghost through missions without leaving a trace. Kolstad went on to explain: 'You look at the games, and he's incredibly adept and comfortable at tech, but sometimes a bullet or a blade or the ripping out of some cord is your best line of defense.' That philosophy hints at a Fisher who isn't invincible, and whose fights might be a little more brutal and desperate this time around. But Kolstad believes the heart of the character remains the same. 'I always loved the world of Splinter Cell. I'm a huge fan of army-of-one [stories] if you do it right. And yet, even though he's had hard decisions to make, it's just refreshing that Sam Fisher's a hero. 'He has moments of empathy and having to do this thing when both decisions are wrong, but one is a little less wrong at the cost of his soul and his own personal life, but for the benefit of the rest of us.' Splinter Cell: Deathwatch will feature Liev Schreiber as the voice of Sam Fisher, stepping into the role long held by Michael Ironside. The series made its first appearance at the Annecy Festival, where director Guillaume Dousse revealed some of the visual and tonal inspirations for the show, citing Ghost in the Shell , Ozark , and even elements of Mission: Impossible . Producer Hugo Revon added: 'It was interesting to have this aging character, not totally like the Tom Cruise version but more realistic, and more weathered by life.' The series is set to hit Netflix in late 2025, joining the platform's growing roster of video game adaptations like Castlevania and the upcoming Devil May Cry series. Meanwhile, fans are still waiting on that elusive Splinter Cell remake, which Ubisoft teased years ago but hasn't delivered any meaningful updates on. So, how do you feel about a Sam Fisher who isn't the best at what he does?
