Nobody 2 Review

Bob Odenkirk's knack for playing complex characters has served him well, and even garnered him an Emmy. Most famously, he played Saul, the slick-mouthed lawyer with severely compromised morals in the TV series Breaking Bad. In Nobody, he plays, ironically enough, a Walter White-esque protagonist (family man, heavy debts, deadly hidden talents), with the same oops-i-did-it-again look that he wielded so effectively in the Breaking Bad spinoff, Better Call Saul.

In Nobody, Odenkirk plays Hutch Mansell, a former assassin whose attempt at suburban family life with a wife Becca (Connie Nelson) and two children implodes spectacularly after a run-in with the Russian mafia. A reactivated killing machine, Hutch takes down a barrage of mafia men, and along the way reignites the lost spark of romance with Becca.

Nobody 2 is a jog around the same block, with Hutch's temper and warped sense of justice once again landing him in trouble, this time against a new set of villains. What's different is the setting: Hutch and his family go on a summer vacation, taking a break from his bloody job (to pay off a debt of the millions in Russian cash that he owes after torching in the first film). The trip takes them to Pummerville, a tacky amusement park where Hutch and his adopted brother Harry once spent a childhood week while their father was off doing his own secret agent job.

Pummerville is both a kitschy family getaway and shadowy criminal playground, a place where Hutch's two lives inevitably collide. It's the kind of backdrop that makes the action not just bigger, but thematically funnier with its creative use of funhouses and giant wheels. "We're on vacation. Makin' memories," Hutch insists, with lesser and lesser conviction as he's inevitably dragged into the corruption woven into the park's underbelly. Pummerville's owner, Wyatt (John Ortiz), moonlights as a mule for a syndicate led by a notorious mafia lady Lendina (Sharon Stone), with the town's sheriff (Colin Hanks) also in on the racket.

Part of the franchise's charm is that its central cast — Odenkirk, Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) as "Grandpa" David Mansell, and John Ortiz (American Fiction) — don't look like your standard action heroes. With the exception of the eternally ageless Connie Nielsen, this is a lineup of middle-aged, lived-in faces, not gym-chiseled hot-bods. Yet together they put up a show, not in some winking parody, but in sharp, high-octane sequences that rank among the genre's best.

But then there's Sharon Stone as Lendina, a mafia boss with a goth-girl aesthetic. Shoulder pads, crimson lips, slicked-back hair, angular sunglasses, and an odd Joker-esque effect capped off with a bizarre dance sequence turn her into something close to a spoof of a villain. Campy, and almost cartoonishly exaggerated in her intonations, she feels like she waltzed in from a different movie.

The David Leitch school of action choreography (Leitch also produces here) leaves its unmistakable mark, with fast-paced, mixed-weapon brawls staged for maximum impact. The fights are visceral yet playful, building a crushing momentum that seems to leap off the screen and pin you to your seat. A standout is the wild "duck boat" sequence, which Hutch insists is just a "bus on wheels", a wry callback to the first film's iconic bus fight and a reminder of how this franchise blends bone-crunching brutality with sly humour.

Nobody 2 builds further on the improbable mix of family and action, with how a corny family vacation turns into a bloodbath. But it's also an oddly unnecessary sequel, one that mostly rehashes the first film and ends up right where it began. Turns out the only thing Hutch can't kill is Hollywood's urge to make a sequel nobody asked for.