Back in 2021, Nobody introduced the novel concept of seeing Bob Odenkirk play a violent action hero.  That incongruity worked surprisingly well, so it’s no surprise that a sequel would be forthcoming.  Nobody 2 picks up where the last one left off, with Odenkirk’s Hutch trying to be a family man while simultaneously working off his debts by way of dangerous assignments from his government handler.  While the movie has the same violent action sequences that gave the first one such a kick, it lacks the angry verve that helped the original rise above similar punch-fests.

In a nod to the original, the sequel’s opening montage shows Hutch enduring a new life-crushing routine.  Instead of enduring his former office/home life monotony, Hutch is busy with assignments from his mysterious handler “The Barber” (Colin Salmon).  Although it felt good when Hutch torched the Russian gang’s money, he’s forced to pay it back or the Russians would come calling.  Since every job is an extremely violent encounter resulting in people dead, I wondered if Hutch would go back to his old desk job if he had a choice.  He’d probably consider his new life a wash and stick with the bloody massacres.

Hutch’s last job involved stealing a data drive from a dweeby guy being escorted by thugs with guns.  No problem.  Hutch takes all of them out in the span of an elevator ride.  Problem is, the job only netted Hutch $800k, reducing his remaining debt to $60m.  Hutch visibly sags upon hearing that number and says he needs to take a break.  The Barber reminds him that “No matter where you go, there you are,” and wishes him good luck.  (The filmmakers behind Buckaroo Banzai must feel immense pride over that line still being quoted going on forty years.)

When they last spoke, Hutch’s wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) told him to come up with a destination for a family vacation.  A cosmic coincidence reminds him of Plummerville, a waterpark his dad took him and his brother to when they were kids.  Since the place represents one of the few happy memories Hutch has from his childhood, he figures why not return there with his family and make memories?  Becca asks Hutch to leave work behind and he agrees, and they head there with Grandpa (Christopher Lloyd) in tow.

If the first movie was about Hutch remembering his true nature, this one is about him trying to control it.  One thing that sets Hutch off is when someone mistreats his kids.  Remember  Sammy’s (Paisley Cadorath) missing kitty cat bracelet in the first movie?  This time around, on their first day at the park, a fight breaks out between Hutch’s son Brady (Gage Munroe) and a local boy.  A hulking arcade worker breaks up the fight and tells Hutch and his family to leave, which is understandable.  However, the guy smacks the back of Sammy’s head as she walks out.  As any parent would tell you, touching one of their kids is way out of bounds, so I don’t fault Hutch for going ballistic here.  But he did break his promise to Becca.

Hutch calls Harry (SZA), who tells him that the site of the waterpark is the middle of an old bootlegging route, and it’s being used by a deadly gang to transport all kinds of illicit stuff.  Hutch decides that he needs to nip things in the bud with the gang, which include park owner Wyatt (John Ortiz) and sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks).  Hutch tells them he doesn’t want any more trouble, he’s on vacation, etc. etc.  Abel tells him to leave, but Hutch and his family stick around because they are on vacation, after all.

The question as to whether Hutch finds trouble, or vice versa, is one the movie broaches but shrugs off in favor of injecting more and more violent confrontations.  Case in point, deputy sheriff Dann (Jacob Blair) and three goons attack Hutch during a boat ride despite being warned by Abel not to do so.  Hutch actually loses a body part in this struggle, but he lays waste to all four.  Dann tells Abel what happened, and Abel relays the news to whom he actually reports to, Lendina (Sharon Stone).  Ledina is a psychopath who favors the scorched earth, no witnesses approach to dealing with problems.  After resolving an issue with a cheating gambler in the messiest way possible, she gathers her black-attired, assault rifle armed soldiers and heads for the park.  As you know, Hutch isn’t the only one in town who’s prepared to go all scorched earth to settle a score.  If you’ve never seen a water park on fire before, here’s your chance.

Recommendation

Nobody 2 is fine, sometimes even good, but it never matches the original.  The filmmakers do what they can with what they have to work with, which isn’t much because the subtext that made the original work so well can’t be repeated.  To compensate for what it can’t do, the sequel amplifies the violence.  While the fight scenes are still brutally kinetic, well-choreographed and fun to watch, they’re not an improvement over what we got last time.

Bob Odenkirk remains the focal point of the action, which is a plus.  Thankfully, he’s still up for the movie’s grueling fight scenes, which is what makes them darkly humorous.  (Yep, that old guy with the face of a bus driver is wiping the floor with twenty armed bad guys.)  As a trade-off, the movie gives Odenkirk more meaningful interactions with his on-screen family than the original.  He shows real chemistry with Connie Nielsen and has a soft touch when playing a father.  If Hollywood ever decides to get serious about theatrical comedies again, Odenkirk would be an excellent choice.

The problem with Nobody 2 is that Odenkirk’s Hutch is static.  While he does recognize that his nature is the source of his problems, the movie pushes his existential crisis aside for increasingly violent confrontations.  The original’s depiction of Hutch wasn’t deep, but at least he had an arc.  This version of Hutch doesn’t change at all and even willingly puts his family in mortal peril.  The movie feels like something written for Jason Statham that he turned down for being too same-y.  In the end, after the epic carnage has run its course, the movie’s message is that the family that slays together, stays together.  That’s progress, I guess.

Besides Odenkirk, I liked that Connie Nielsen’s Becca has an active role in the plot.  The movie hints that she has a shadowy past like Hutch, but that’s all we’re told.  Gage Munroe and Paisley Cadorath are fine as Hutch’s children.  John Ortiz distinguishes himself as the put-upon theme park owner, a man who’s become tough out of necessity.  Similar to Odenkirk, his best scenes are the smaller ones, when he talks about his family.  On the negative side, Colin Hanks is one-dimensional as the evil sheriff.  Sharon Stone must have had a lot of fun hamming it up as the Big Bad, but her performance is so bizarre that it quickly becomes distracting.

Nobody 2 is an okay continuation of the original, content with leaning heavily on Bob Odenkirk and his grueling fight scenes.  The family scenes help to balance things, and there should have been more of those.  The movie is entertaining, but nothing special.  Mildly recommended.

Analysis

That Nobody 2 works at all is a minor miracle, because most of what made the original special  can only be done once.  It can’t show us Hutch transforming from an unassuming, graying, non-confrontational family man into a remorseless killing machine.  The sequel also can’t present itself as more middle-aged male wish fulfillment either,  because Hutch got his mojo back and plenty of revenge.  Nobody 2 needed to do something different to justify its existence, which it does, only but enough to make the movie a quick and entertaining diversion.

Taking Hutch and his family on the road is a good idea, because it produces a handful of scenes where Hutch connects with his family in a meaningful way.  However, the waterpark locale  primarily exists to give us the same violent confrontations we’ve seen before in odd places.  Hutch fights bad guys in an arcade and on a boat, and the big climax takes place within the waterpark itself.  In other words, different, but same.

Given that the fight scenes were a selling point of the original, I expected to see more of the same in the sequel.  And while director Timo Tjahjanto gives us plenty and they’re well-choreographed, they’re not enough to build a movie around.  I will say that the moment when Hutch lost a fingertip shocked me, because the heroes in these movies almost never lose a body part, even a small one.  But other than that, I expected Hutch to get beat up while beating up his opponents more, and that’s what I got.

The tone of the fight scenes is noticeably different in Nobody 2 than in the first movie.  In the original, Hutch’s violence arose from his anger and self-loathing.  He wanted to hurt people and had no qualms doing so, because it made him feel righteous.  In Nobody 2, the fight scenes are tweaked for comedic effect.  For example, everything that happens on the duck boat is played for laughs, even Hutch’s injury.  When the fish ate his fingertip, I laughed because it’s a great sight gag, but it’s emblematic of the film itself, which wants to be funny.  

Nobody 2 is interesting whenever it quiets down and explores the relationship between Hutch and Becca.  The two connect more in this movie than they did in the original, where Becca was a passive observer.  I liked Hutch and Becca’s heart-to-heart conversations, which allow veteran actors Odenkirk and Nielsen to imply a lot with vague dialog.  I also appreciated that Becca played a role in the final confrontation.  I didn’t understand why she left the kids alone, though.  The movie doesn’t bother to explain why Becca’s a crack shot, which was frustrating because the movie is barely ninety minutes long and could have included another conversation or two.

Having seen John Ortiz in other movies (American Fiction) and television shows (Bad Monkey on Apple), I knew he wasn’t the actual bad guy when he first appeared on screen as Wyatt.  Ortiz always comes across as a nice guy who can be a hard ass when he needs to be.  So when Wyatt was bossing Sheriff Abel around, I figured his tough guy act was just that.  My hunch was proven right in the scene where Wyatt explains himself and his situation to Hutch.  It’s a great scene because Wyatt’s confession gives Hutch the cathartic, emotional release that he’s unable to bring himself to.  It’s also a showcase for Ortiz’s ability to be raw and vulnerable, and he’s quite moving in it.

Where Nobody 2 goes wrong is with the villains.  Colin Hanks portrayal of Sheriff Abel is serviceable at best.  Because Sharon Stone’s Lendina is the actual Big Bad in the movie, Abel has no purpose in the plot other than holding her spot until she arrives.  I suspect that the screenplay originally had Abel as the Big Bad, and Lendina was added later because Abel wasn’t interesting enough.  Abel’s unceremonious death by Lendina’s soldiers underscores how irrelevant Abel is, because he’s killed for being useless.

Which brings me to Sharon Stone’s Lendina.  Her performance is so unhinged that I never believed Lendina was a criminal mastermind.  In the original, when Yulian Kuznetsov killed a rival in his club after dancing on stage, it felt like something out of a Martin Scorsese movie.  In Nobody 2, Lendina is crazy.  For example, killing the gambling cheaters in her club is one thing, but her “scorched earth, no witnesses” approach to the situation made little sense because there had to be twenty guests who died.  I would have thought someone–a friend, family member or a loved one–would have noticed that many people not returning home that night.

Lendina’s behavior is even more inscrutable in the end, when she calmly sits in her limousine while all of her armed men are decimated in a matter of minutes.  Why hang around when you’ve become outnumbered?  Yes, she has her ladykillers watching her back, but what good are they against heavily-armed adversaries?

I’m curious if the only way the filmmakers could get RZA to return was promising him a scene where he could play samurai.  He’s good in the five minutes he’s in the movie, but the scene where Harry cuts both Pavel’s sword and head in half with a single stroke was silly.  I don’t know where the Nobody franchise goes from here, but it’s getting dangerously close to self-parody.