Hello everybody and welcome to a new 2021 movie review! Today I am going to be talking about that latest attempt by a high profile dramatic actor to star in their own R-rated revenge action flick! This time we have Bob Odenkirk of Batter Call Saul fame joining that fun club with Nobody, which came out when theaters were starving for product and ended up being a nice small scale hit that dominated the VOD charts for many months. I remember knowing next to nothing about this movie until the first red band trailer dropped and once I saw it, it immediately shot up my most anticipated list. Even though I’ve never seen Better Call Saul I still knew of Bob Odenkirk and of his talents as an actor and I’m sucker for hard R-rated action movies. So naturally I was interested in this for that alone as well as the fact that it is written by the man who wrote John Wick, Derek Kolstad. Unsurprisingly, the movie itself ended up being just as fun as I hoped it would be! Without further ado, let’s jump right in and explore what made this Odenkirk vehicle such an enjoyable ride!
The story follows one Hutch Mansel, a seemingly ordinary individual with a wife and two kids and who works a rather unremarkable job at his father-in-law’s fabrication company. He goes about living a fairly normal existence until one night armed robbers break into his house and instead of fighting back Hutch decides not to intervene to keep damage to a minimum. While they do end up leaving, Hutch is seen by many, including his own son, as a failure for not taking care of the robbers. So through certain means, he ends up tracking down the robbers in order to retrieve his daughter’s kitty cat bracelet. However things don’t go quite as planned and before he knows it, he ends up releasing his frustration on a bunch of thugs harassing a woman on the bus ride home… by beating the absolute crap out of them. Turns out Hutch has some very special skills that he kept hidden for a very long time. Well now he is going to need them, as it turns out one of the thugs happens to be the brother of a Russian crime lord named Yulian. So now Hutch must prepare to defend himself as well as his family by showing these criminals what he is truly capable of.
Naturally, one of the movies one would think of when seeing the trailers for this would of course be John Wick as it has a fairly similar basic concept of a retired hit man coming back to take care of some baddies who provoked him in some way and it is a hard R rated action movie with plenty of gun play. However, the devil is in the details and Kolstad is able to avoid repeating the same tricks that he utilized for that film and carve something that successfully stands on it’s own two feet. The story itself is simple in nature but Kolstad does a good job in making it investing nonetheless as one becomes intrigued by the character of Hutch right from the get go and see how he will navigate his predicament. There is also a fair amount of set up at the beginning before the action really starts to hit, which is smart as I was able to get a solid understanding of who the character which made me genuinely invested in the many action scenes beyond just watching them unfold. All of it is done efficiently and effectively with the film becoming a fun non stop thrill ride once we hit that bus fight, but not without plenty of solid character beats that add to the experience. Further adding to that is that the feature runs a brisk hour and a half, never overstaying it’s welcome and running at a good pace throughout. Also differentiating itself from John Wick, is that the film has much more of a sense of humor that is mostly sarcastic in nature and it works, coming off naturally and never as a forced attempt to be witty. It all comes together to form a story that is simple yet successful at what it’s going for nonetheless.
Of course when one hears there’s a new movie with the people who worked on John Wick involved in some capacity, I can imagine the first thought would be “this is going to have some great action isn’t?”. A correct assumption in this case. The film is directed by Ilya Naishuller who manages to craft some lively and often time bone crunching sequences that are creative in execution and vary from one another nicely. What makes them even more fun, is how Hutch may be a former assassin, but he isn’t the unstoppable one man army John Wick is usually portrayed as. He can get vulnerable and is knocked down by his opponents constantly, often bleeding and struggling to get back up. It’s this rough and tumble style of fighting that makes these scenes have a good bit more urgency than if he were a super powered one man army and I got a kick at seeing him take down his opponents in brutal fashion. Adding to authenticity is that Bob Odenkirk (who is 60 years old) trained heavily for this role and does a lot of his own stunt work and one can see all that hard work pay off in glorious fashion here. The stunt work is genuinely impressive throughout and makes things even more hard hitting as I almost felt the punches coming at me which just shows how brutal the fights are. The stand out sequence for me is easily the fight on the bus between Hutch and the thugs as we see just what he is capable of and takes great advantage of the cramped single location. My other favorite would have to be the final battle which plays like a violent variation on Home Alone with a bunch of creative traps and some great pay offs. However Naishuller is smart to make sure each sequence has something different about it than the one before to avoid any repetition that may arise from watching the same gun fights and fist fights over and over again. Big shout outs to the editors as well, who are able help in making everything flow nicely and keep things engaging consistently. In all, it has the feel (and this is a compliment) of an old school action movie, but done with modern filmmaking sensibilities and a whole lot of style!
What is most likely the biggest selling point for many people is getting to see Bob Odenkirk, who isn’t exactly known for being an action star, play in this type of sandbox, and those people are likely going to be very satisfied by what they get. Odenkirk is great in the role, successfully playing Hutch as someone who is desperate to live a normal life but is simply frustrated (and thrilled at the same time) that he has to resort to violence again, yet he is still determined to protect those he loves. Hutch could have easily come off as a one note middle aged man who finds himself going through a mid life crisis and gets to play out his action packed fantasy. However thanks to the writing and especially Odenkirk’s multi faceted performance, he instead becomes a compelling character who has way more than just punching bad guys on his mind. On paper, he’s essentially John Wick if he had something left to fight for which in this case is his family. Unfortunately I do think that was one aspect of the film that came off a bit underdeveloped. While we do get a couple of moments of him interacting with them (mainly his wife, Becca, played by Robin Wright), I do think a bit more could have been done to flesh them out. I will admit though one does get a sense of the history him and Becca have with one another (largely due to the talents of the performers) and his love for them is clearly evident, I just feel like a couple of more scenes with them would not have hurt. I also felt Yulian, despite the best efforts of Alexsei Serebryakov to give him more energy, was a pretty standard crime boss. He gets a fun introduction, showing off his karaoke skills, which seems to set him up as a memorably lively yet intimidating personality, but aside from that, the character isn’t given a whole lot to do other than send people to hunt Hutch down and eventually go after the man himself. Characters I felt were excellently utilized though were the other members of Hutch’s family who share very similar skills. There’s his brother Harry, played by RZA, whose vocal interactions with Hutch through most of the movie give a sense of the relationship they have nicely and his father, David, who is played by none other than Christopher Lloyd. Now that right there is a name I don’t usually see a lot of in major pictures these days, so imagine the joy I felt seeing him in a movie like this having the time of his life! He does exactly what one would hope he would do in an action movie like this and it is just glorious and makes the climax even better! It’s the Christopher Lloyd performance I never knew I wanted and given how the film ends off I ended up wanting to see more of him and his two sons.
All in all, I found Nobody to be a really fun ride with a simple yet well told story, funny humor, a lot of style, hard hitting action sequences, a compelling lead character, and great performances all around, especially from Christopher Lloyd. While there were some underdeveloped aspects that could have used more time to be fully fleshed out, I had a great time with it and found myself wanting to see more of these characters. It delivers exactly what one would hope for from the trailers and if your an action fan/or want to see Bob Odenkirk kick some butts in style then I would highly recommend checking this one out if you haven’t. I myself definitely see myself re visiting this one in the future and hope that we will continue to get more hard R-rated action flicks like it. Now let’s just hope that rumored sequel comes to fruition!
Rating: A-
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