Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is $30 million in the hole after torching that much of the Russian mob’s cash in Ilya Naishuller’s surprisingly fun 2021 film Nobody. Now he’s stuck with daily “snatch and grab” gigs, usually involving the messy removal of armed goons, to chip away at the debt. The physical toll is obvious, but the emotional strain of missing time with his family, including his disappointed wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), is the deeper bruise. So Hutch, Becca, son Brady (Gage Munroe), daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath), and father David (Christopher Lloyd) flee to the country’s oldest waterpark for a little R&R. Naturally, the local law enforcement is neck-deep in bootlegging guns, money, and chemical weapons, and Hutch manages to stumble right into the middle of it. Violence, of course, follows like a blood-soaked shadow.
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto (The Night Comes for Us) with a gleeful sense of go-for-broke chaos, Nobody 2 is both an unnecessary sequel and entirely disposable, yet it is an undeniably entertaining continuation of cinema’s most mild-mannered middle-aged rageaholic. It is a suiting capstone to a mostly mediocre summer slate, the kind of movie you would happily watch on a long flight but shouldn’t seek out unless you’re an action junkie craving the next fix. The plot exists mainly to yank Hutch out of suburbia and drop him into a literal funhouse, where he and his allies rig Home Alone-style death traps for an infinite wave of anonymous assailants.
Tjahjanto orchestrates the mayhem like a crunchy action symphony, heavy on fireballs, shattered teeth, and gun-fu. The story steadily fades into the background, replaced by increasingly elaborate showdowns between Hutch and ever-larger armies of thugs. The big bad, Lendina, a psychotic black-market queenpin played by a gloriously over-the-top Sharon Stone, devours the scenery and spikes the film’s manic energy every time she is on screen. Odenkirk, clearly having hit the gym and the stunt room since the last outing, does a hefty share of his own fight work. His ability to sell both lethal efficiency and “how did I get myself into this?” exasperation remains the franchise’s secret weapon.
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘Nobody‘ directed by Ilya Naishuller and starring Bob Odenkirk]
Colin Salmon, RZA, John Ortiz, and Colin Hanks round out the ensemble. It is an impressive roster on paper, though no one is exactly bringing career-best work here. The performances are knowingly broad, skewing toward comedy, as if everyone involved decided to treat the whole thing as a slightly deranged summer camp. Still, there is something refreshing about a movie that does not pretend to be deeper than it is. Tjahjanto resists the urge to inflate the mythology or shovel us more unnecessary Hutch backstory. Instead, he drops the guy into a fresh nest of villains and lets the chaos bloom. It is National Lampoon’s Vacation by way of John Wick, a family trip gone spectacularly, violently askew, with gags that increasingly involve dismemberment. De-escalation is not on the itinerary.
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Still, Nobody 2 cannot quite shake the sense that it is recycling recycling. John Wick’s DNA is so dominant here it sometimes feels like an algorithm’s idea of “more of the same.” The difference is Odenkirk’s everyman weariness, which keeps the ultraviolence from tipping into pure cartoon. Tjahjanto knows when to slow down for a wry line or hesitant beat before the next explosion of gunfire, giving the film just enough personality to keep it from becoming a stunt reel.
In the end, it is exactly what the title implies: a placeholder, a guilty-pleasure midnight snack you will not regret but probably will not remember. You will watch it, enjoy it, and forget it by the time your plane lands, which in the dog days of August might be all it needs to be. It is the cinematic equivalent of a hot dog — perfect for summer, tasty in the moment, but nutritionally empty and gone from your mind as soon as you are done. But as long as you enjoyed the taste while it lasted, the hot dog — much like Nobody 2 — is a perfectly serviceable way to sate your appetite.
CONCLUSION: Bob Odenkirk returns as everyman assassin Hutch Mansell in a vacation-themed sequel that extends the brand no further than swapping his hoodie for a Hawaiian shirt. At a brisk 89 minutes, stuffed to bursting with laugh-inducing fisticuff mania, it serves as a breezy and blood-soaked capstone to an otherwise forgettable summer season.
B-
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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