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| TRAILER |
By the time Bob Odenkirk struts into the third act of Nobody 2, half his shirt is soaked in someone else’s blood, his right pinkie is missing, and his face is a topographical map of swelling. He is also grinning. That grin — weary, self-aware, a little amused at the absurdity of it all — is the franchise’s truest calling card.
Director Timo Tjahjanto’s sequel to the 2021 sleeper hit doesn’t so much expand the Nobody universe as it gleefully reloads the chamber. Here, Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell — once again a supposedly retired assassin and suburban father — embarks on the most precarious mission of all: a family vacation. What follows is less a plotted narrative than an unapologetic, joystick-clicking spree of violence, each set piece staged with the kind of perverse imagination that makes you laugh even as you wince.
A Griswold with a Body Count
It begins innocuously enough. Hutch, still indentured to the shadowy underworld figure known only as The Barber(Colin Salmon), decides he’s earned a break. His debts can wait; his wife, Becca (a steadier, more involved Connie Nielsen), and their two kids deserve a few days in the pastel paradise of Plummerville Waterpark. The place is a candy-colored relic from his childhood, complete with spiraling slides, sticky arcade joysticks, and hot dogs that taste like nostalgia.
But in the moral physics of Nobody, violence is a gravitational constant. An arcade altercation — the wrong man shoving the wrong little girl — ruptures Hutch’s fragile détente with his past. The slap delivered to his daughter Sammy may as well be a starter pistol; from that moment, the park becomes a war zone, populated not by cotton candy vendors but cartel foot soldiers and corrupt lawmen.
If the first Nobody drew much of its kick from the slow reveal that Hutch was more than an everyman, the sequel has no such luxury. The surprise is gone. We know he can dismantle six armed opponents with a strip of cloth and a beer bottle. What Tjahjanto offers instead is scale — an escalation of creative mayhem that turns the film into a vacation brochure from hell.
Carnival of Carnage
The violence in Nobody 2 is operatic in its inventiveness. An anchor becomes a harpoon, a katana turns a man’s grin into a grim bisect, and a house of mirrors becomes a ballet of misdirection and muzzle flashes. Tjahjanto films these encounters like hyper-violent side quests in a video game: the elevator level, the water slide gauntlet, the buzz-saw arena. Each environment offers new textures of pain.
If this sounds like overkill, that’s because it is — proudly so. The film is in on the joke. Like John Wick but filtered through a half-drunk carnival barker, Nobody 2 relishes the ridiculousness of its set pieces. Men are literally blown into limb-sized confetti in a plastic ball pit explosion. Christopher Lloyd’s octogenarian David Mansell roars into battle with a gatling gun, his face lit by muzzle flash like a kid discovering sparklers. Sharon Stone’s Lendina slinks through her scenes in low-cut menace, playing the kind of villain who knows her job is to be both dangerous and dangerously fun to watch.
The Heart Beneath the Bruises
For all its bone-crunching excess, Nobody 2 still feigns a moral center. Hutch’s compulsion toward violence, the film insists, is not thrill-seeking but protective instinct — a misguided expression of love for his family. Even Wyatt Martin (John Ortiz), initially sketched as a criminal kingpin, turns out to be another parent cornered into corruption to shield his own child.
The film flirts with an armchair-psychology debate: The Barber tells Hutch, “The nature always wins,” implying he’ll never shed his killer’s skin. His father offers the counterpoint — that nurture can still shape the next generation. In quieter moments, Odenkirk plays these tensions with a surprising tenderness, as if Hutch suspects that every fight he wins for his children’s sake might still be a moral loss.
But let’s be honest — this thematic scaffolding is mostly there to justify the next melee. The narrative’s minimalism is both a blessing and a liability: it keeps the pace lean (a brisk 89 minutes), but it also flattens the stakes. Without the first film’s element of discovery, the sequel can sometimes feel like an endless highlight reel of finishing moves.
Odenkirk, the Reluctant Gladiator
That said, Odenkirk remains the franchise’s secret weapon. His performance operates on two simultaneous frequencies: the deadpan banality of a man just trying to grill hot dogs and the sudden, terrifying precision of a predator. There’s still a trace of Saul Goodman’s verbal agility in his asides, but here it’s channeled into survivalist wit — a muttered one-liner before slamming someone through a railing.
The actor’s physical commitment is undeniable. At an age when most Hollywood stars are negotiating for close-up doubles, Odenkirk is hurling himself into walls, swinging pipes, and enduring hits that would send most mortals into traction. It’s not just impressive; it’s oddly endearing.
Nielsen, given more to do this time, emerges as more than the eye-rolling spouse archetype. Becca gets her own moments of decisive action, proving the Mansell marriage runs on a shared vocabulary of violence when necessary. RZA, as Hutch’s brother Harry, remains a charismatic wildcard, while Lloyd chews through his scenes with an almost vaudevillian glee.
The Director’s Playground
Tjahjanto, known for his kinetic Indonesian action films, brings an unembarrassed pulp sensibility. His camera is restless, zooming into the geometry of combat, then pulling back to admire the full absurdity of the choreography. There’s an almost musical structure to the violence — a verse-chorus-verse pattern where each verse is a smaller brawl and each chorus a full-blown set piece.
Yet for all the craft, there’s an unavoidable sense of déjà vu. The same six-against-one dynamic plays out again and again, to diminishing impact. By the finale — a sprawling shootout that turns Plummerville into a neon-lit war zone — you’re both exhilarated and slightly numbed.
A Guilty Pleasure Aware of Its Guilt
Critics will be split, as they already have been. Some will see a “preposterously vicious” romp (to borrow Variety’s phrasing), a self-aware cartoon that knows it’s ridiculous. Others will lament its formulaic tendencies and absence of the first film’s slow-burn charm. Both are right.
What’s undeniable is that Nobody 2 offers exactly what its title promises: the return of a man who is both everyone and no one, whose moral compass spins wildly but always points toward family, and whose vacations are anything but relaxing.
If you approach it expecting depth, you may leave disappointed — though perhaps with a grudging smile. If you approach it like you would a vintage arcade shooter, ready to feed it another quarter just to see the next level’s madness, you’ll find a film that rewards your willingness to play along.
The final shot — Hutch walking the family dog past a row of smoking wreckage — is pure visual punctuation. In this universe, peace is only ever an intermission. And honestly? We’re already curious what absurd battleground he’ll desecrate in Nobody 3.
Until then, Hutch Mansell remains cinema’s most bruised and bemused avatar of revenge — a vacationing gladiator whose idea of rest involves fewer mai tais and more makeshift weapons. And Bob Odenkirk, improbably, remains the kind of action star you can imagine reading bedtime stories right after breaking a man’s arm.
Verdict: Not high art, not trying to be — but Nobody 2 wears its guilty-pleasure badge like a medal, inviting you to watch, wince, laugh, and wonder how on earth Odenkirk is still standing.
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