Nobody 2: Nobody Packs a Punch like Bob Odenkirk

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When Nobody came out in 2021, Better Call Saul was at the height of this popularity. It was very new to see the otherwise unassuming and reserved Bob Odenkirk in a violent role like Hutch Mansell and that juxtaposition was its selling point. Nobody 2 still works on that premise because they don’t dwell on it. Instead of Hutch trying to suppress his violent past for the sake of a suburban family life, he’s trying to get back to that routine life he once struggled to navigate. After setting the Russian mafia money on fire he has to keep doing assignments for the CIA to pay off his debt.

His wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen), and children, now teenagers, are feeling the rift between them and they are not happy. With his son, Brady, is beginning to show violent tendencies and Becca feeling his absence, he decides they all need a family vacation, and what better destination than the only holiday he remembers going to as a child? Plummerville is the kind of old-school family resort that was only remotely novel 30 years ago and your brain conveniently blocks out the smell of damp that permeates the place for nostalgia’s sake. Determined to make things work out, Becca reluctantly agrees. When they are forced to forgo the famous waterslide for the arcade, a fight breaks out between the amusement park’s owner’s son and Brady, and when one of the employees smacks his daughter, Sammy, the entire audience is barely afforded an anxious “Oh no….” before shit starts going down. The Carnival version of When The Saints Come Marching In is the first non-diegetic needle drop in a series of wonderfully choreographed fight scenes, this one using whack-a-mole and claw machines as weapons of choice.

Once again, it turns out he stumbled into something bigger than what it seems and he pisses off the wrong people. It turns out Plummerville is a bootlegging front for the eccentric Lendina (Sharon Stone), who I thought was a very fun villain to watch, albeit not having much depth. It reminded me of watching Ballerina and being absolutely bored with The Chancellor as the antagonist. In both of these movies, we don't have much context or backstory, but for a summer action film, at least one of them has character and she's styled for the part. 

Despite their brilliant choreography, the fight scenes were more sanitized than in the first film, you see a lot of punches but their impact is tamer. Additionally, Nobody presented Hutch as more human, while the sequel portrays him as an indestructible man, which gets a bit boring sometimes, but I guess it could be explained as him having had a lot of practice between the movies. One of the best fight scenes, which happens to be on a tour boat, parallels a lot from the first movie, which I only remembered after going back to rewatch the original. The problem with that is I think the sequel wouldn’t necessarily resonate with fans of the original based on that nostalgia because it's not that memorable, so I wish they experimented with original bits rather than rely on callbacks.

The final throwdown is helmed by a series of home alone contraptions, which, in a setting like Plummerville, is fun in theory. In practice? It is less so, and more tonally deficient, and criminally underutilizes Colin Hanks who played Abel, the corrupt sheriff. However, it is carried by the dynamic between the characters, especially Hutch’s dad, David (Christopher Lloyd), and his brother, Harry (RZA), who’s emboldened by his recent travels to Japan and armed with a Katana.

Which brings me to how this movie does a great job of dealing with addressing male aggression, by tying Brady’s budding violent tendencies to his father, and Hutch trying to somewhat stop the cycle, while instilling that Brady knows how to stand up for his loved ones.  

It is sweet how you can clearly map out Hutch’s moral compass throughout both movies: his soft spot is kids and pets, anyone else is getting killed. It is also generally consistent as the events of both movies were kickstarted out of love for his daughter, because that’s the only way he knows how to show love. Despite being aware of his past, this behavior is what troubles Becca, and this movie does a great job of showing those romantic undertones and addressing the rift between the couple while leaving room for the audience to make their own guesses about the history of Becca and Hutch.

Finally, it is with a heavy heart that I say, I wish I didn’t like Nobody 2 because “Nobody Puts Hutch In A Corner” would’ve been a great title for that review. However, this movie was a great conclusion to a summer full of great action blockbusters. It hits all the right comedic bits, it delivers on the action, and it has great second-chance romance. What more would you want from a fun action movie?