‘Nobody 2’ Review: Can Anybody Find Me Somebody to Punch? [B-]

Four years ago, Bob Odenkirk surprised and delighted audiences with his sort of anti-John Wick action movie, Nobody. That film was a modest success at the COVID-suppressed box office before becoming a much bigger hit on streaming just a few weeks later. It also showed a new side of the actor best known for playing sleazy TV lawyer Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

In Nobody, and now the sequel Nobody 2, Odenkirk is everyman Hutch Mansell. When we first met him, he was a bored accountant living a very normal life in the suburbs with his wife and kids. But then his home was burgled, he ran afoul of the Russian mob, and it turned out Hutch had been a particularly talented assassin in another life. Now, several years later, Hutch is back to his assassinating ways, partly because, let’s face it, he really enjoys killing bad guys, but mostly because he burned millions in mob cash and the clandestine organization that paid the Russians off now expects him to work for them until his debt is cleared. He still owes about $30 million, but the way he’s going, his contact, The Barber (Colin Salmon), estimates he can have that paid off by next spring.

Nobody 2 opens in exactly the same way as the original, by starting at the end. Hutch is bloodied and handcuffed and giving vague responses to two bewildered detectives’ questions. It isn’t giving anything away to establish in the beginning what movie we’re watching. And in these types of action movies, the good guys always win. The suspense isn’t really whether they will make it out, but how.

From the police interrogation room, we journey back a few weeks to see the Mansell family and their very normal routine. Becca (Connie Nielsen) is a successful real estate agent. Brady (Gage Munroe) is now a 17-year-old basketball star, and 12-year-old Sammy (Paisley Cardorath) never leaves home without her camera. It’s an ideal suburban family, although they are increasingly disconnected as Hutch’s work these days takes him away from home long past dinner time. Distance and broken communication is perfectly normal in a family with two working parents and teenagers at home, but here it is treated like a terrible tragedy that can be blamed solely on dad’s job. And sure, that is certainly not helping things. But do Becca and the kids realize they are a very normal suburban family and that it would be weirder if they spent every evening together?

The obvious solution to this splintering family is for Hutch to ignore his $30 million debt, turn down a lucrative contract and whisk his family away for a summer vacation to the kitschy amusement park town of Plummerville in some unnamed part of the American Midwest. If the first teaser gave you Vacation vibes, the family’s arrival in Plummerville is where the similarities to the classic 1983 comedy end. 

Winnipeg, Manitoba stands in for the nondescript middle American hamlet, a town that seems to exist far from civilization, with only one hotel, some carnival rides, and a water park that is closed more often than open, though it appears to be populated and thriving. Where the residents of Plummerville actually live is anybody’s guess since we really only see the rickety theme park and hotel, a few buildings on Main Street, and an old mill, because where else would the town’s criminals hide their secret criminal enterprise? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll come back to that in a minute.

Nobody 2 is a movie best enjoyed for its silliness. Do not think more deeply about it than director Timo Tjahjanto (The Night Comes for Us) or screenwriters Derek Kolstad (Nobody, John Wick) and Aaron Rabin (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) did. It’s the type of explosive, goofy, gory action picture that used to dominate the summer box office. On that level, I had a lot of fun, laughed at the funny bits and averted my eyes when I knew something especially grisly was coming. But at only 89 minutes, there are many opportunities to expand the story, to reveal more about the characters, to make the town feel like a real place and not just a movie set. Instead, they jump from one fight to the next with barely time to catch a breath in between. The action is almost non-stop, not for story-telling purposes but as if they are in a race against an imaginary clock and just want to get to the end as quickly as possible.

Because of this, the characters feel more like caricatures with hints of interesting backstories that we’ll never get to know. John Ortiz plays Wyatt Martin, the reluctant custodian of his father’s once glorious theme park. Wyatt and Hutch find themselves at odds when their sons get into a fight in the arcade. Wyatt rules this town, using the sheriff (Colin Hanks) as his own personal enforcer. He’s the typical big fish in a small pond, stuck with an amusement park that is apparently failing even though it’s busy and still seems successful. He has a lot of debts, mostly from his late father, probably because one of the things this town is lacking is a decent estate  and probate attorney. For his part, Hanks tries to be the menacing small town sheriff. Though he shows up a lot and tries his best, he doesn’t have any standout moments in an unremarkable role that could have been played by just about anyone.

In the first film, Hutch crossed paths with the Russians by accident after a home invasion robbery and then an unrelated street fight on a city bus. Here, his son’s fight with a bully inadvertently puts Hutch in the crosshairs of Wyatt’s business partner, the sadistic crime boss Lendina, a cartoonishly evil Sharon Stone. She runs a fancy casino somewhere nearby in possibly another part of this confusing and unmappable town, but also runs an international criminal enterprise that happens to be headquartered in Plummerville. Stone’s onscreen presence should have made this a fantastic casting choice, but it somehow feels all wrong. As a character, Lendina is clearly inspired by several of the campiest and evilest Bond villains, but Stone’s performance is stilted and awkward. There are some delightfully diabolical bits, but mostly she is evil and twisted in ways that make you wonder how someone like this could ever have been taken seriously enough to rise to power. But really, don’t spend too much time wondering, just accept it and move on.

It is with Hutch’s family that we spend most of our time. This is a family vacation after all. On their way out of town they stop to pick up Grandpa David (Christopher Lloyd) from his retirement home. He doesn’t want to stay in the cheesy old hotel, opting to stay “at the lodge” instead and then disappears for a while to a private cabin in the woods outside of town. Why does he have a cabin in the woods outside of a town he only visited once? Does anyone else use it? If not, why is it in such good shape? How did he get there if he doesn’t have a car? Why are we still searching for answers in a movie that is just supposed to be about beating up bad guys?

The most teased and unfulfilled character, though, is Becca, Hutch’s long-suffering better half. It’s always been clear that Becca knows something about her husband’s shadowy past, but how much she knows is still a mystery. This time around, we learn Becca has some skills of her own, and that when the two first met, Hutch was “covered in blood.” As Becca, Connie Nielsen gets the chance to try her hand at some stunt work and it’s fun to watch her get into the action, but if we’re ever going to get to learn anything real about Mrs. Mansell, we’ll have to wait for Nobody 3.

Despite some missed opportunities and an illogical plot, Nobody 2 is an entertaining, action-packed summer flick that delivers a whole lot of Bob Odenkirk being a badass and punching bad guys. What’s not to like about that?

Grade: B-

Universal Pictures will release Nobody 2 only in theaters on August 15.