Who knew Bob Odenkirk could be this much of a Renaissance man? Best known for playing slick, fast-talking lawyer Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Odenkirk is a legend in comedy circles, and one of the most widely-respected comedy voices of the last 30 years. He’s also been praised for his dramatic chops in Breaking and Saul, and minor film roles like the Oscar-nominated Nebraska. Now Odenkirk is trying his hand at action star. Maybe it’s the audacity of casting Odenkirk, or maybe it’s that Nobody has a clear grasp of tone and successfully staged satisfying and gruesome action sequences, but the result is a violent romp you don’t want to miss.
Odenkirk is Hutch Mansell, an unsuspecting suburban family man, drawn back into a former life as a methodical, efficient hitman. At first glance, it may sound derivative of a recent film series centered on another likeable star begrudgingly pulled back into his old assassin ways: the John Wick series. That’s no mistake—the creator and writer of the existing three Wick installments, Derek Kolstad, also penned the script for Nobody. It does share the winking chaos of the Wick films, and while it owes its existence to Wick, it doesn’t live in it’s shadow. The familiarity of the plot beats is part of the charm. Nobody bakes more humor and schlock into its dialog and sequences, smartly taking advantage of Odenkirk’s comedic background and unremarkable everyman presence. He’s just as believable in the quaint, suburban settings as he is systematically taking out trained killers invading his home, effectively carrying the movie and then some.
Kolstad is paired with director Illya Naishuller, whose most notable credit is directing 2015’s Hardcore Henry. Henry is an action flick that mimics a first-person shooter game, putting the audience in the POV of the main character for the entirety of the movie. It’s a fun gimmick, but one that can’t quite support a full-length movie, but Naishuller is no slouch at staging exciting, well-choreographed action sequences. In Nobody, they are both brutal and funny, a mashup of outrageous, over-the-top action of 1985’s Commando and the visceral, wincing violence of 2011’s The Raid.
The biggest weakness of the movie, and where it may draw the most unfavorable comparison against the Wick series, is the flatness of Hutch’s family of four. The criticism is less with Connie Nielson, playing Hutch’s wife, or the two kids, and more with the writing. They aren’t given much to inflate them beyond two dimensional characters. Wick had an emotional hook which is unashamedly manipulative but no less effective; Nobody is missing that driving human motivation for Hutch. It’d be a more glaring problem if movies like this weren’t built to care less about the inciting incident and more about getting our protagonist back in the saddle, but it still feels a bit lazy.
Like the best movies in this vein, Nobody has the confidence to lean into its own absurdity. Movies are itching to be back in a big way, but the summer run won’t begin in full until we get the domino effect of A Quiet Place Part II, Fast 9, Black Widow, etc.—and Nobody is the perfect pre-game to your blockbuster season.
Nobody is currently playing in theaters and available to rent on AppleTV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. It runs 92 minutes and is rated R for strong violence and bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use.
