“I’m here with my family making memories,” Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) insists in Nobody 2, the continuing adventures of a semi-domesticated government assassin who just wants to be there for his wife and kids when he’s not busy slaughtering faceless goons. The thing is, we don’t really believe him: The more Hutch claims that he wants to be left alone, the less convincing he becomes. But that’s also what’s interesting about this lightly enjoyable, mostly disposable sequel to 2021’s amiably ultraviolent Nobody. In that first film, Hutch was enjoying a peaceful and uneventful life as a beta office drone when circumstances beyond his control pulled him back into his former profession as an “auditor,” a guy who eliminates inconvenient people. As played by Odenkirk, he seemed confused much of the time, as if his killer instincts and deadly moves were taking even him by surprise, amnesiac–Jason Bourne style.
In Nobody 2, Hutch is back at his old clandestine job, partly to pay off debts he incurred amid the devastation of the first movie. He’s still having trouble being present as a father and husband because now his week is spent sawing his way through anonymous thugs. His wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen), wants to have a serious talk about his absence from their lives; his son, Brady (Gage Munroe), is upset that dad is missing his games. The film follows the family on a trip to an old rundown theme park called Plummerville, where Hutch and his brother, Harry (RZA), spent some happy days as kids; our hero hopes that this will make amends and bring the Mansells together. Naturally, as soon as they get there, Hutch beats the shit out of an arcade full of scumbags that harassed Hutch’s daughter, Sammy (Paisley Cadorath), and Brady, then finds himself entangled in a sinister smuggling operation involving a sleazy local sheriff (Colin Hanks) and an all-powerful gangster (Sharon Stone). It’s a surprisingly stacked cast — the great Jon Ortiz also shows up, as Plummerville’s corrupt, conflicted owner — but only Stone truly digs into her part as an over-the-top hellion so psychotic she thinks nothing of massacring every single customer in her own casino.
The gleeful mayhem has been well mounted by Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto, whose work in genre pictures over the past decade or so has gained him a following among the action cognoscenti. The main danger with these types of movies is that all the fighting and shooting and snapping and stabbing and exploding will feel predictable or anonymous in a universe where action movies have become mere background noise. Tjahjanto infuses just enough creativity in his set pieces to keep us watching.
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But the most fascinating thing about Nobody 2, as with the previous entry, remains Odenkirk’s face. With his sharp eyebrows, perpetually quizzical grimace, and quivering voice, he locates a certain lostness in Hutch that actually runs counter to the character’s expertise at killing people. It also runs counter to his constant pleas that his sole wish is to spend quality time with his wife and kids. Hutch doesn’t seem to know what he really wants: Family life clearly doesn’t fulfill him, but neither, we gather, does ripping through assorted henchmen. The effect may not even be intentional, but somehow, by hook or by crook, Odenkirk’s performance captures the particular unease of the modern middle-aged male, uncomfortable in realms both spectacular and mundane.
The Nobody movies come at the tail end of the now-moldy dadsploitation rage that kicked off with Liam Neeson’s hit turn in Taken more than 15 years ago. The subgenre was already getting old way back in 2014, when critic Matt Prigge coined the term “peppy fogey fighting romp,” still my favorite description of these types of pictures. Today, Neeson is doing action spoofs (thank God), and even the John Wick series has run its course. (Nobody writer Derk Kolstad also wrote the first three Wick flicks.) Somehow, this fits with Hutch’s whole deal. A running gag in these movies is the protagonist’s attempts to catch the local garbage truck in the mornings before it leaves his street. He is out of time and out of place. Odenkirk’s perpetual mask of confusion speaks both to this character’s inability to find contentment in the world and to these movies’ quaint status as the last vestiges of a once-thriving subgenre.
