Bob Odenkirk’s unlikely new career journey as a kickass tough guy continues in this pretty formulaic and forgettable sequel to the amusing original hit, which first showed us Hutch (Odenkirk), an apparent suburban nobody with wife-plus-kids who keeps forgetting to put the garbage out in time – then from nowhere busts out some serious fight moves.
This sequel from Indonesian action director Timo Tjahjanto, co-written by the writer of the original, Derek Kolstad, really doesn’t have much of the humour and the storytelling chutzpah of the first film. But what it does have, inevitably, are endless gonzo fight sequences in which Hutch is unfairly matched against half a dozen or so humongous goons, and winds up reducing these bullies to cat litter. There was a big scene in the first film set on a bus, and it seems to have become the Nobody franchise’s USP.
The idea now is that Hutch is still working as an assassin but neglecting his family, so he insists on taking them all on a summer break to a cheesy vacation resort with a goofy water slide and silly cabins – a place to which his dad, the lovably cantankerous grandpa played by Christopher Lloyd, who comes along too – once took him when he was a kid. Inevitably Hutch gets involved with local bad guys, including a corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks) and sadistically mean crime boss Lendina, played by Sharon Stone.
And so the six-against-one punch-ups continue, to diminishing effect, with a massive war-zone-style finale in a funfair. The film does contrive to produce a dog for Hutch at the film’s beginning and end, in an obvious attempt to pump up his family-guy relatability. Odenkirk sells it conscientiously enough, although his fans may still prefer to remember his harassed lawyer in TV’s Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, or his psychotherapist in Arrested Development.
• Nobody 2 is out on 14 August in Australia, and on 15 August in the UK and US.
