I enjoyed the mindlessly violent movie "Nobody" more than I've enjoyed nearly any other film I've seen this year on a purely visceral level. And this is strange for me, because I usually have a lot of queasy feelings of guilt about enjoying something this out-and-out exploitative. Also, I've reacted very badly to similar films about vigilantes in the past, like "Death Wish" and "Taken." So, I ended up thinking way too hard about a movie that is doing its best not to have its audience think at all.
Bob Odenkirk plays a seemingly ordinary, middle-aged suburbanite named Hutch Mansell, with a dull job, a failing marriage to a realtor named Becca (Connie Nielson), and two kids. Hutch, of course, has a secret that the audience already knows. He's a man capable of great violence, who gave it all up to build himself a normal life. Now, however, the opportunity to come out of retirement rears its head, and Hutch finds himself up against a Russian crime boss named Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksei Serebryakov) and his endless mobs of heavily armed minions. RZA and Christopher Lloyd also play significant characters, but I leave you to discover which ones for yourself.
So, the big reason why I didn't find "Nobody" particularly distasteful, is because it's a cartoon universe. The violence, orchestrated by "Hardcore Henry" director Ilya Naishuller, is wildly over-the-top and intended to look cool. The villains have no depth whatsoever, and exist to be easy targets. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor, visual playfulness, and obvious exaggeration. "Nobody" was written by Derek Kolstad, who is responsible for the "John Wick" movies, and this could have easily been a film from that franchise. It borrows some of the best gags, like minor characters immediately backing off and retreating when they realize who Hutch is. The action scenes are full of unlikely and impossible acts of badassery, getting more and more outlandish as the film goes on.
Another key difference is that "Nobody" is not a revenge movie. There's little attempt to justify any of what our leading man is doing or take the plot seriously. Hutch returns to violence because he wants to, and perhaps on some level he needs to. The film puts much more effort toward showing that Hutch is a good, kind, responsible man, despite his propensity for carnage. Bob Odenkirk seems like an unlikely action star at first, but he's so good at generating quiet pathos and intrinsic decency. Hutch appreciates the damage he can cause, and doesn't take it lightly. We want him to let loose, and Hutch does too, but he refuses to do it indiscriminately, the way we see in so many other films like this. Even when he finally does find the suitable targets for his ire, he plays fair. He's not mean about his savagery, and what really seems to tick him off the most is when he's not afforded the same courtesy by his enemies.
"Nobody" fits the genre of the middle-age male power fantasy to a T, and I appreciate that it's so direct in its aims, and frequently self-aware. Despite how Hutch is introduced, we're not here to examine the existential malaise of the modern man. We're here to enjoy watching people get into ridiculous fights and blow things up real good. Hutch being representative of an older generation of ass-kickers mostly just serves as a handy excuse to feature an old muscle car in a chase scene, and to put Louis Armstrong, Andy Williams, and Pat Benatar on the soundtrack. And frankly, it's a nice change of pace.
I look forward to the inevitable "Nobody" sequels, and can only hope that Connie Nielsen gets to join in the antics a bit more next time.
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