Nobody 2

Bob Odenkirk makes a welcome return in this vehemently entertaining action comedy as Hutch Mansell, the retired government assassin who just wants a quiet life with his family, despite having a name so butch he might have climbed out of the womb with a scowl on his face and a knife behind his back.

The visual dichotomy between the safe, grey daylight of the home and the backlit mobsters in their mahogany lairs where Hutch discharges his ultraviolent responsibilities dissolves when he and his brood escape to an amusement park for a holiday. But of course, there’d be no movie if he didn’t stumble into a new world of trouble – as if indifferent zoomer staff and malfunctioning rides weren’t enervating enough!

This unfamiliar setting illustrates how low is the rung Hutch occupies on the ladder of organised crime, thus making a sly statement about its own little class system: where his superiors lounge in the lap of the millionaire luxuries of gaudy casinos and obsidian fleets of military-grade vehicles, his family makes do with America’s answer to Alton Towers. Besides the sympathy this generates for them, the park’s potential for incongruous set pieces is fully exploited in the farcical mayhem of the climax.

More pertinent to the main story, Hutch’s relationship with his equally formidable den mother of a wife (Connie Nielsen) has been suffering from the unsustainable conflict between his duties as a husband and those as a professional badass. Melancholy music accentuates those little gaps in their conversations, those bitings of the tongue when you want to complain to your better half but you hate making their life even more difficult than it already is.

In an expository montage, the superficial pleasures of domesticity are sung by a jazz orchestra on the soundtrack, while frantic editing and slightly panicked close-ups give away the relentless intrusions of the underworld. There, the action scenes are again executed with hyperactive camerawork and brutally witty direction, yet still leavened by the ironic counterpoint of Odenkirk’s phlegmatic commentary to the befuddled police.

As Hutch’s dad (a former secret agent himself), octogenarian Christopher Lloyd is given as much to do as he can stand, his grizzled energy a thumbed nose to his advancing years. Like Odenkirk, he’s a figure so beloved by movie buffs that he’s impervious to criticism, and the film does have a tendency to use the exasperated charisma of its cast as a crutch.

Sharon Stone sinks her perfect teeth into the role of the local don with the relish of a starved doberman, her faded glamour and foul-mouthed malice reminiscent of Kristin Scott Thomas’s turn in Only God Forgives. It’s a tremendous part, rare as diamonds for an actress her age in Hollywood, and she knows that only too well. Meanwhile, John Ortiz and Colin Hanks give strong support as her sweaty serfs.

Given that the twist about the hero’s past has already been blown, some of the freshness of the original film has inevitably been lost. Nobody 2 is merely a second chapter in the adventures of its likeably put-upon protagonist, as opposed to a sequel that truly develops its smart premise. But there’s life in the old dog yet, as the film’s commitment to character over convenience as the source of the action gives it a strong thematic spine – all the better a pivot to kick your ass from.

-Stew Mott-