Nobody 2 Review: Bob Odenkirk Is So Much More Likable As A Sleazy Lawyer Than An Ass-Kicking Dad

I can say that I’ve been a fan of Bob Odenkirk’s going back literal decades. In the 1990s, my introduction to him came via the hilarious and brilliant sketches on Mr. Show with Bob and David (along with one-off appearances on some of my favorite sitcoms), and like just about anyone else you might talk to, I was stunned by his turn to the dramatic playing the slippery Jimmy McGill a.k.a. Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He’s repeatedly proven himself a smart and talented performer with tremendous range, and he has a unique charisma that lets him succeed as both a lead and in supporting roles.

For this reason, the Nobody movies frustrate me to a great degree. I was disappointed when I saw the original back in early 2021; like any fan, I expected to take delight in the actor’s first turn as an action star but instead found myself underwhelmed by poor writing and shocked by its bad messaging. Things only get worse in Nobody 2, as the script this time around is somehow even more rote, and it reveals Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell as a hero that is pretty damn impossible to root for, even with the actor’s special charms.

Like its predecessor, the prequel entirely hangs on the audience’s desire to see a talent like Bob Odenkirk take part in some brutal cinematic violence – but the simple novelty of the basic idea is gone now, and there is no effort to compensate with anything else. What results is watching an unlikable protagonist get locked into a plot that offers no stakes and what amounts to an unpleasant and unfulfilling cinematic experience.

After spending Nobody conquering his boring suburban life by reengaging his love of violence, Hutch is reintroduced in Nobody 2 stuck in another rut: he is forced to perform wetwork jobs in order to pay off a debt incurred when he set fire to the Russian cash stash in the first movie, and a consequence is that he becomes distanced from his wife (Connie Nielsen) and two children (Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath). He is in need of a break, and with bizarrely little pushback from his handler (Colin Salmon), he makes plans for a family vacation.

Leaning into the nostalgia of the one trip he took with his father (Christopher Lloyd) and brother (RZA) when he was a child, Hutch takes the Mansell clan to Plummerville – a tourist trap with a water park and various other activities. What the exhausted assassin doesn’t know is that the place is a secret hub of criminal activity orchestrated by a boss named Lendina (Sharon Stone), and when he gets on the bad side of the local sheriff (Colin Hanks) and son of the town’s founder (John Ortiz), he finds himself as a target and his family in danger.

Bob Odenkirk's Hutch Mansell is a lousy main character who only gets worse in the sequel.

The key issue that haunts Nobody 2 is the fact that the protagonist generates all of his own problems, and he doesn’t have the likability to make us appreciate his efforts to dig himself out of the hole. The world of the film doesn’t actually impose any problems on him: when Hutch wants a vacation from his debt-clearing assassin work, it’s granted without any protest or consequence, and despite all of his selfish and violent behavior, there is seemingly no line that he can cross to earn what would be deserved ire from his family (Connie Nielsen’s Becca does draft a “We need to talk” text in the first act when he becomes an absence in her life, but that’s quickly deleted and substituted for an “Okay love u,” and a proper confrontation never happens).

He repeatedly claims that his big motivation is to have a fun vacation with his family full of happy memories… but that comes while ignoring that he could easily do that by just going anywhere other than Plummerville and take his loved ones to a place where their lives aren’t in danger. To be fair, there are moments where he makes strong moral choices (like the decision to rescue a kidnapped teenager he discovers during a confrontation in a crime den), but the movie puts a much greater emphasis on his applications of rage in personal and petty moments, and it renders him consistently challenging to root for.

Director Timo Tjahjanto's action skills are apparent in Nobody 2, but don't enthrall as they do in his other movies.

This bad storytelling can’t help but have a negative impact on what drives Nobody 2, which is the action. Director Timo Tjahjanto is an exceptional talent when it comes to crafting chaotic and brutal fight scenes (2018’s The Night Comes for Us is so jaw-dropping that it should be pre-empted with a “might cause TMJ” warning), and there is some fantastic choreography executed – but it’s all empty calories when the main character’s journey is so pointless and the danger never feels substantial. I can appreciate the fun that the filmmakers had coming up with ideas for how to turn a waterpark into a slaughterhouse with various weapons, riggings, and explosives, but that translates to just moments of fleeting fun on the big screen.

It’s made exceptionally clear throughout the brisk 89 minute runtime that Nobody 2 is not a film meant to be taken too seriously (best exemplified in the ludicrous scenery-chewing done by Sharon Stone in her weirdly truncated, one-note performance as the main baddie). But just because a movie is silly doesn’t automatically make it fun, and I definitely didn’t have any fun. It does a lot of what its predecessor did, only worse, and without even being able to activate the well-established charms of Bob Odenkirk, it’s a bad time at the movies.