I don’t mind action for action sake, so long as that’s what you’re selling from the start. If you’re in on your own self contained joke and recognize the absurdity of your genre, I’m perfectly fine with things that go boom amid a wafer thin plot. but “Nobody 2,” like its predecessor insists that it’s more than that, constantly hinting that it’s thematically rich and character driven amid its fisty cuffs action. And sure, when you examine the bones we can find some mild musings about fatherhood, work/life balance and the need to make memories with your loved ones on vacation. The problem is, this film only KIND OF cares about those things, keeping most of it surface level at best and leaving the rest of the action to feel repetitive and hollow.
The novelty has run its course, and the film ends up suffering the same fate as “Mission: Impossible- Final Reckoning” in that it becomes painfully obvious they created action sequences first then attempted to connect them with story later. While that can sometimes produce solid results, “Nobody 2” struggles to meld its everyman undertones with its over the top killing machine framework. Mere hints of character and character development are rushed through to get to the next set piece, leaving our protagonist in the exact same spot as he was when we started the film. It leaves everything that isn’t violence boring and tonally imbalanced, abandoning many of its groundwork plot points as quickly as they were introduced. This film feels half baked and undercooked, and while there’s some fun to be had sometimes it’s all but forgotten by the time you get home.
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto (“The Big 4,” “The Shadows Strays” which I absolutely loved and highly recommend) and written by Derek Kolstad (“John Wick” franchise) and Aaron Rabin, “Nobody 2” picks up right where we left off in the first film. Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) has given himself over to his work, taking job after job and turning wet work into a monotonous 9-5. His increased absence and dinner misses leave his family needing a husband and a father, and in an effort to reconnect with them Hutch decides to take them on vacation to Plummerville, an old school theme park in middle America that he went to when he was a kid. After a run in with some security guards at an arcade, the darkside of the small town become exposed, forcing Hutch back into the fray of violence. It also stars Connie Neilsen (“Gladiator“), John Ortiz, Colin Hanks, RZA, Christopher Lloyd (“Back to the Future“), and Sharon Stone.
Tjahjanto is maximalist filmmaker and the right choice for a game Odenkirk wanting to push his action talents to their limits. On front of both Tjahjanto’s manic action eye and Odenkirk’s love of the action game, “Nobody 2” is at its best and a step up from its predecessor. The set pieces are creative, big and bold – the way action should be – and while it feels repetitive narratively, they almost never repeat. The “Home Alone” style finale at an abandoned theme park allows this film to go nuts with fun new ways to dispatch bad guys, making it hard not to sit back and relish in the carnage. Odenkirk really feels at home throwing punches and grabbing anything around him to use as a weapon, and to Tjajjanto’s credit he gives him plenty of unique ways to break teeth and unload lead into henchmen. It’s just everything else around it that left me wanting and disappointed.
For as much as it pretends to be about fatherhood and wanting your children to be better than you, it never truly explores those themes in any meaningful ways or worse, ways that make the action feel substantive. Again, action for action sake is fine so long as that was your intention from the beginning, and while one can argue that this follow up is bit more focused than “Nobody,” I’d argue it’s far less effective. Hutch simply doesn’t change, nor is he ever forced to reckon with his familial abandonment or deal with the consequences of his work. There’s no character development in a film that – at its core – wants to be as much about character growth and strengthening relationships as it does to be about putting our hero in clever, violent confrontations. “Nobody 2” doesn’t have enough meat on the bones to do both, and ends up being only slightly amusing and mostly plodding even amid its 89 minute runtime.
Sharon Stone’s cartoonish villain is insufferable. I’m sorry, but I didn’t buy her character, nor Stone’s performance for a single second. She is laughably bad here, and while it’s clear she’s having a blast the rest of us are left with another non-threatening, heavily ADR dialogued, laughably goofy (in the worst ways) villain. Some will champion her work here, but I found her to be one of the worst parts, even among some other needless inclusions. It just feels like every thematic element was manufactured in reverse, starting at point B because the action took them there and then muddling their way back to point A in hopes that the path has something more to say but ultimately deciding it doesn’t matter.
“Nobody 2” has plenty of laughs and some truly gnarly action, but lacks an overall entertaining and memorable quality that doesn’t survives beyond the brief runtime.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Stars
“Nobody 2” is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.
