In Timo Tjahjanto’s ferociously entertaining sequel, the suburban dad-turned-assassin returns for a lean, bloody, 89-minute spree
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Will we ever tire of the aging assassin/gunslinger/gangster who gets “pulled back into” his old life by circumstance, usually extremely violent circumstance? I’d say no, based on the happiness and mirth one experiences watching “Nobody 2,” in which Bob Odenkirk’s ordinary-looking Los Angeles suburban dad, Hutch Mansell, finds himself battling baddies at a rundown water park/drug dealing and money laundering hub called Plummerville. Directed by Indonesian horror/action filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto (“May the Devil Take You Too”), making his English language debut, “Nobody 2” is a deft demonstration of the art of making a film that is a joyful transportation to a world where our wishes are the commands of the cinematic angels (or demons, more likely) of mayhem and murder. Only art can make it possible for us vicariously to kill or beat up people without payback or guilt.
Like “Nobody,” “Nobody 2,” of course, also recalls “Taken,” the 2008 sensation that I believe only I raved about, in which Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills brought his “very particular set of skills” to bear on the soon-to-be maimed or dead people who kidnapped his daughter in Paris. Tall and handsome, Neeson is a heroic figure, a modern-day knight errant. Odenkirk is not exactly cut from the same cloth. He’s not John Wick either, although the “Nobody” films have serious Wick DNA for sure.
At the start of “Nobody 2,” Hutch’s biggest problems are getting the trash bins out on time in his ordinary suburban neighborhood and his rocky relationship with his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen, a great asset), and children, Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath). To make amends for his many failures as a father and husband, Hutch decides to take the family, including his retired FBI agent father, David (Christopher Lloyd), who stamps out an offensive burning cigar in the palm of his hand, to the old-fashioned water park where his dad took him and his brother when they were kids. Hutch is still stuck doing “assignments” for The Barber (Colin Salmon) to pay off some huge debt. For example, he has just decimated a bunch of machete-armed Brazilians.
At the park, we get a “The Right Stuff” image of the Mansell family. But soon, Hutch, who is given a warning by a menacing sheriff named Abel (Colin Hanks), is battling big bad guys at the arcade, smacking one villainous man’s face into a game’s glass console. Have you had so much fun anywhere lately? Hutch swears to Becca that he wants to de-escalate and decompress. But since when did life let you do either of those things? Only death, drugs or movies like “Nobody 2” relieve us from life’s pressures.
Odenkirk, a hero for many for “Better Call Saul,” somehow makes Hutch both hapless and ridiculously capable of beating people up and killing them. He’s all Three Stooges rolled into one explosive package, and, yes, he hits people with hammers and anvils and anything else he can get his hands on. As his adoptive brother, Harry, RZA brings Quentin Tarantino’s favorite weapon, the katana, to the film.
The fight scenes are beautifully choreographed, if also bloody and sometimes gruesome (samurai-style), and as the film’s arch-villain Lendina, the criminally under-employed Sharon Stone is delightfully over-the-top, ordering in one scene a mass murder at a casino, an homage to her Academy Award-nominated work as the unfaithful wife in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” (1995).
Seldom before have a carousel, duck boats, a ball pit or a fun house been the setting for so much blood-letting, all to the tune of such standards as “If I Ruled the World,” “Lady” and “Ring of Fire.” In a reminder of how long we have enjoyed such insanity at the movies, in the final throwdown, Hutch uses a Thompson .45 machine gun on the evildoers assigned to kill him and his family. Paging Jimmy Cagney. “Nobody 2” joins “Kill Bill” and “John Wick” as some of film’s most violent, non-stop, guilty pleasures.
‘Nobody 2’
Rating: R for strong bloody violence, and language throughout.
Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Christopher Lloyd, Sharon Stone
Director: Timo Tjahjanto
Writers: Derek Kolstad, Aaron Rabin
Running time: 89 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters Aug. 15
Grade: A-
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