Odenkirk Returns to Throw Punches and Trade Barbs in Comedically Violent Nobody 2
My only issue with Nobody 2 is that it is perfectly content to replay what worked best in 2021’s Nobody and not put much thought into doing anything ambitiously different. The biggest change was the one revealed during the final act of the first film, when supposedly mild-mannered accountant Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is forced by circumstance to reveal to his family that he was once a covert government assassin who misses his old job. Other than that? It’s safe to say there’s little here we haven’t seen before.
The sequel picks things up with Hutch’s secret identity as a known element. This forces wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and kids Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) to proceed with the expectation that dad isn’t going to be around for family dinner or other important activities like he used to be. It also means that, when they do see him, he’ll probably have a few noticeable bumps, cuts, and bruises that he no longer has to conceal from them.
It’s a lot of pressure on everyone in the house, and the cracks in what had previously been a pleasant family dynamic are beginning to show. Hutch decides it’s time for a vacation, and he’s determined to take the entire crew, including Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd), to Plummerville, a Midwest tourist hotspot known for having the oldest water park in the United States. Going there as a kid is one of his most cherished childhood memories, and now he wants to share that experience with Becca, Brady, and Sammy.
Unsurprisingly, things do not go as planned. Plummerville is a weigh station for transportation of money, guns, and all sorts of nasty weapons of mass destruction, and Hutch’s inability to walk away from a confrontation leads to him accidentally discovering the truth behind the theme park. What follows are several confrontations between the unassuming, yet still highly lethal, family man with a bevy of adversaries, the most dangerous of which is the private army controlled by psychotic arms dealer Lendina (Sharon Stone).
Even with a fresh small-town Americana setting, the actual plot progression for this sequel is eerily similar to its predecessor. The confrontations the beleaguered protagonist faces grow in bombastic scale from one set piece to the next. Everything culminates in a bloody throwdown at the amusement park where Hutch uses Home Alone-style ingenuity to dispatch one enemy after another. It’s that simple.
There are a few notable tweaks to the template (RZA returns as Harry Mansell, and while he gets another spectacular throwdown against some baddies, he also gets to unsheathe a few new tricks), just not enough of them to shake up the feature’s rudimentary template. What the sequel does have is the presence of director Timo Tjahjanto, the Indonesian action maestro known for brutal whirligigs like The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays, and May the Devil Take You. His staging and orchestration of the crackerjack action sequences is superb, including a duck boat fight between Hutch and a cadre of buffoonish Plummerville locals that’s an absolute delight from first punch to the face to last kick to the groin.
Nielsen gets more to do, and that includes the violent stuff. There’s a nice supporting role for veteran character actor John Ortiz that has more nuance to it than it initially appeared there was going to be, while Lloyd again steals his scenes with a wicked twinkle in his eye and a diabolical skip to his step. As for Stone, Lendina is as one-dimensional an antagonist as these cartoonish free-for-alls can get, yet that doesn’t stop her from vamping it up to the hilt. The actor is clearly having the time of her life, and watching her go so far over the top that she practically saunters through the screen like she’s Charles Dance holding a golden ticket in The Last Action Hero isn’t without its perverse delights.
There’s not much more to it than that. Nobody 2 may be a step down from its delightful predecessor, but it’s still a great deal of fun in its own right. Odenkirk makes for a winning sadsack everyman antihero, most of the comedy lands, and Tjahjanto and his wickedly talented stunt team don’t skimp on the visually rambunctious hand-to-hand, sword-to-sword, knife-to-knife, and gun-to-(tommy)gun theatrics. For everyone who enjoyed the first film, it’s likely this sequel will also hit the spot just fine.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
