Reel Review Roundup

Nobody (MA)

Directed by: Ilya Naishuller

Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Christopher Lloyd

Review by: Julian Wright

An average Joe Blow family man’s secret comes to light after a home invasion in the latest action comedy Nobody.

Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is your average suburban husband and father who has fallen into a rut of routine with his ordinary office job and emotionally distant family.

When two thugs break into his house, a repressed side of Hutch resurfaces: he is a trained but retired assassin. Hutch borrows his father’s (Christopher Lloyd) old FBI badge and gun and goes looking for the offenders.

But a violent and bloody confrontation on a bus with a group of rowdy harassers makes Hutch and his family the target of the Russian mob.

Nobody milks a lot of mileage from juxtaposing humdrum routine with visceral violence and gun play – the biggest gag is that all this bloodshed and body count is over a child’s kitty bracelet.

It is sharply scripted and neatly put together, save for an establishing montage early on of Hutch’s daily grind routine (wake up, go for a run, go to work, repeat) that gets several repeats too many.

Odenkirk, who concocted this story, is refreshing and perfect as the unlikely action star and on a pure enjoyment level, it is a thrill to see gun-toting octogenarian Christopher Lloyd shine.

However, without giving us much reason to invest on an emotional level (the strained relationship between Hutch and his wife Becca played by Connie Nielsen is fatally under-cooked), this doesn’t have the weight that similar franchise starter John Wick had.

This entry was posted on April 8, 2021 at 8:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.