Bob Odenkirk, the most unlikely action star maybe ever, is back as family oriented hitman Hutch Mansell in Nobody 2, Timo Tjahjanto’s ultraviolent follow-up to Ilya Naishuller’s critically acclaimed 2021 original. Nobody 2, which is now available to stream on all major rental platforms, has received the same amount of critical praise as the original. Is it worth your rental money?
What is Nobody 2 about?
Picking up immediately after the events of the original, which culminated with Hutch burning a sack of money belonging to the Russian mafia, the put-upon hitman is now in over his head trying to repay his debt in the form of gory assassinations. This means he’s often late, or simply not present, at home. As a result, his long-suffering wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen), son Brady (Gage Munroe), and daughter Sammy (Paisley Codorath) are feeling even more estranged from Hutch than before, so he organizes a family vacation to an amusement park which provided happy memories in his youth.
Along for the ride is Hutch’s dad, former FBI operative David (Christopher Lloyd), and his long-lost brother (RZA). Unfortunately for Hutch, his arrival at the amusement park is met with an unceremonious closure and some harassment from a group of toughs connected to a corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks) in the palm of criminal kingpin Lendina (Sharon Stone), who’s connected to the Russians Hutch wronged in the past film.
Nobody 2 Lives Up to the Original
Despite the myriad contrivances which lead Hutch back to the events of the first picture, Nobody 2 is an admirably straightforward action-comedy which, at a brisk 89 minutes, does exactly what it says on the tin in record time. The original Nobody was a strong original action movie, notable mostly for Odenkirk’s committed emotional and physical performances. While Tjahjanto’s sequel doesn’t feature any stunning set pieces along the lines of the original’s bus smackdown, it’s a remarkably strong sequel which is just as good, in some respects a little better, than the original.
The amusement park setting is great fun, lending itself to an amiable bloodbath of a showdown in which Hutch and the rest of his family set Home Alone-but-lethal traps for Lendina and her subordinates. Odenkirk puts a great deal of feeling into his character, and so his performance is more nuanced than most in this genre. He’s also a formidable physical presence, performing many of his own intricate stunts. Both Lloyd and Stone have fun with broadly written roles, and Tjahjanto allows them to go just weird and wacky enough to sell the franchise’s arch tone without letting them go off the rails. (A dance sequence featuring Stone seems destined to be memed.)
In a sequel which centralizes family, both blood and criminal, Nobody 2’s greatest asset is, by no surprise, Nielsen. Tasked with a fairly rote wife/mother role in the original, here the Gladiator star is actually given some substantial action and import to the story. Both separately and together, Nielsen and Odenkirk specialize in a similar manner of sly understatement. As a duo, they’re the couple who ate the canary–both seeming to harbor great secrets and complexities behind their more traditional veneer. Their quiet, realistic chemistry is the best part of this raucous, loud, extremely bloody but also wildly entertaining sequel. Hopefully, we’ll get even more of them together in part three.
