Bob Odenkirk unleashes his inner badass in a rollicking, slam-bang “family” adventure inside a small-town amusement park
Nobody 2
Starring Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Colin Hanks & Christopher Lloyd
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto
Rated R
In theaters Friday, Aug. 15
Nobody plays Nobody like Bob Odenkirk.
In this follow-up to the 2021 action-thriller, the Better Call Saul star reprises his role as a former government assassin who just wants to disappear into mild-mannered family life as a “nobody.” But his past keeps bleeding into his present, quite literally.
After the events of the first film, Hutch Mansell now finds himself deep in debt and back at his old job, taking “assignments” to run a gauntlet of global thuggery—a gaggle of Croatians with MP7s, an elevator crowded with Chinese assassins, and a parking garage full of Mexicans with machetes. Like a lot of us, he needs a vacation. So he gathers his wife (Gladiator‘s Connie Nielsen) and their two kids (McKenna Grace, who played little Tonya in I, Tonya, and Gage Monroe), plus his still-sprightly dad (Christopher Lloyd) for a getaway to a small-town lakeside resort he remembers visiting as a child with his brother (played by the Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA).
But at Plummerville, he runs into more trouble, including a viciously corrupt cop (Colin Hanks) and an extravagantly wicked criminal mastermind (Sharon Stone) with her thumb on a pipeline of bootlegged vice. John Ortiz is the top dog in Plummerville, but all his badassery barks and bites mask another, more nuanced side.
Setting the movie in a theme park provides for some colorfully creative action scenes, including a knock-down drag-out fight aboard a “Duck Boat” ride, a shootout in a house of mirrors and a children’s ball pit turned into a multi-hued minefield. It has a lot of bang-bang, boom-boom, snapped necks, broken bones and brutal hand-to-hand walloping—and one particularly memorable encounter where a head is sliced neatly in two. But there’s a come-together theme of family, of fathers and sons, and the bonds that can bring people closer—to right wrongs, fight bad guys, or weaponize a Ferris wheel.
“Making memories” is what Hutch tells everyone he’s doing on vacay with his family. See Nobody 2 and your memories will include seeing Bob Odenkirk as an infinitely resourceful badass who can turn a waterslide into a death trap.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 