You’ve seen it all before: a middle-aged off-the-grid specialist gets forced out of retirement when circumstances beyond their control stir up their humdrum life and curry them back onto a path of violence. Bryan Mills had a particular set of skills and hit the ground running when his daughter was kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers while John Wick’ skill with any sized caliber weapon came into sharp focus when Russian criminals killed his dog. In Nobody, no one has to kidnap his daughter or slay his pup to get Bob Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell all fired up, his pent-up rage and years of living live on his belly reaching a tipping point when some amateur home invaders break into the wrong house. Like a nobody should, he does nothing.

Hutch holds his cool. Even though he has the drop on the would-be perpetrator, he opts not to – as Mel Gibson’s Graham Hess might say – “swing away.” Hutch faces censure from his disappointed son, his hyper-masculine neighbor, and his marine brother-in-law, all who gladly chime how they wish it were their house that had been invaded so as to have the perfect excuse to kick some ass and take out the trash.

Hutch however is a professional; his murderous days behind him. But what is so now is not so indefinitely and when Hutch realizes that his daughter’s “kitty-cat bracelet” has gone missing with the loose change that the vandals made off with, his veneer of quiet, calm, collected melts away. That thin line separating the hapless neighbor who perennially forgets to put out the trash and a hardened career killer dissipates like the final breathe of a dying man. For basically no good reason at all, Hutch is thinking he’s back.

From the director of Hardcore Henry, Nobody almost ironically explores Hutch’s addiction to violence in as ultra-violent a manner conceivable. As he embarks down a gratuitous warpath, longing for anyone unfortunate enough to look at him the wrong way, desperate to find any old punk who’s feeling lucky so he can bash their brains in, we see that violence has lingered inside Hutch for many years and when he finally taps back into that animalistic impulse, we feel ourselves leaning into the gory, painful action beats, as addicted and desperate for these beatdowns as Hutch is himself.

At first glance, Ilya Naishuller seems an odd duck choice to be wielding this kind of commentary on violence in Hollywood. His previous efforts all lived and died by the sword, often devoid of intelligible character or plotting. But with Odenkirk in the pole position and a script from Derek Kolstad (screenwriter on all three John Wick movies) that jostles gracefully between snarky jokes and crunchy action, the punch-drunk elements gels admirably and you’re rarely stopping to dwell too much on the psychological themes stitched into the films’ fabric, too taken by the mindlessly thrilling, bone-cracking action spectacle of it all.

With intelligible, long-cut fisticuffs, smartly blocked shoot-outs, and carefully-constructed frenetic action choreography, Nobody is one long bout of controlled chaos. Working with a stunt team that recalls both John Wick and The Raid and shot under the crisp, moody cinematography of Pawel Pogorzelski (Hereditary, Midsommar), the film which ostensibly could be called a Wick-Rip (off) feels instead like the real deal. A huge factor in that assurance is Odenkirk and his unassuming, sardonic presence.

The Emmy-nominated Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul actor has ameliorate himself to audiences over the years as a non-threatening slime bag with a heart of gold but with Nobody, you’ll believe that this 58-year old can tear limb from bust Chewbacca-style. Yes, Odenkirk underwent the Hollywood action star transformation routine, cutting his abs into superhero-sized platelets, bulging his biceps into heaving lumps, but it’s his cool, unironic, badass demeanor that powers the character’s swagger. Balancing the punches, bloodlust, and easy smarm, Odenkirk embodies a man who can take down a room of armed assailants and then monologue his life story to the one surviving man, only to realize that the man had keeled over before the end of his origin story. Death is funny – or at least it is when wielded by Odenkirk.

On the one hand, Nobody is a rather forgettably affair, the individual story beats a rather benign, inconsequential backdrop that exists only to prop up an action flick where Bob Odenkirk, RZA, and Christopher Lloyd all band together to kick ass. And yet, Naishuller’s balls-to-the-wall actioner opens a new career trajectory for Odenkirk, potentially giving life to a franchise with just as much juice as the John Wick name itself. Now if the two were ever to cross, we’d have a matchup as monstrous as Godzilla taking on King Kong.

CONCLUSION: ‘Nobody’ delivers exactly what it promises to with Bob Odenkirk proving himself a beefy blood-addicted badass when the time calls for it. Gratuitously violent, with clean action choreography and expertly blocked set pieces, the amusing actioner from Ilya Naishuller reinvigorates our love for addictive on-screen violence.