The wrong guy is picked on in fun, kill-heavy ‘Nobody’
First, we get a close-up of the beaten face of Bob Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell.
Hutch, handcuffed and sitting in a darkened room, then pulls a cigarette from a pack and lights it with a Zippo.
Next from his jacket comes a can … of tuna and … a can opener … and then … an adorable little kitty that gets to work on its dinner.
We then see that a man and a woman — obviously law-enforcement types — have been sitting across from Hutch and observing this whole production.
“Who the (expletive) are you?” the woman asks.
“Me?” he says. “I’m …” “NOBODY,” announces onscreen text for the new, reasonably fun action film with that title.
“Nobody” is penned by Derek Kolstad, a co-creator of the “John Wick” franchise, who wrote the series’ first two entries, co-wrote the third and is credited by this movie’s production notes as being its “narrative architect.”
Not surprisingly, “Nobody” feels quite “Wick”-ian; it’s a guilty-pleasure, empty-calorie romp seemingly designed to hold us over until the arrival of the fourth installment of the beloved over-the-top action franchise starring Keanu Reeves, set for theaters next year.
Here, instead of Reeves’ namesake ultra-skilled assassin, we get Hutch, who, after this prologue sequence, we see living a mundane-and-frustrating experience.
The days of the week rush by and repeat for him with unsatisfying work and home lives, the latter involving him somehow missing the Tuesday morning garbage pickup every week. That is a fact his distant wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen, “Wonder Woman”), announces to him — quite unnecessarily — each time. And while his teenage son, Blake (Gage Munroe), seemingly couldn’t be less impressed with him, at least he still is adored by Blake’s younger sister, Abby (Paisley Cadorath).
Hutch works for his fatherin-law, Eddie (Michael Ironside, “Top Gun”), and with his brotherin-law, Charlie (Billy MacLellan). He doesn’t have much use for either of them and would like to buy the manufacturing business, but Eddie’s holding out for a bigger offer than what Hutch is willing to give.
Things go from bad to worse at the Mansell home one night when two masked robbers break into the house. Hutch has a chance to take one out with a golf club after Blake attacks them, but he opts for the least-confrontational option, letting the thieves escape with little of monetary value.
However, Blake’s disappointment in him and ribbing by a cop who comes to the scene eats at him, and he decides he needs to do something. Starting with a tattoo he spotted on one of the robbers, Hutch starts down a trail to find those who’ve wronged him.
Even before this point, we get hints there’s more to Hutch than meets the eye. Without saying much more, he’d better have a serious bag of tricks if he is to survive an eventual crossing of paths with a notorious and sociopathic Russian mobster, Yulian Kuznetsov (Alexey Serebryakov).
Just know that, before “Nobody” is over, Hutch will have spilled much blood and in a variety of ways — John Wick would be proud — and have roped his retired FBI agent father, David (Christopher Lloyd of “Back to the Future”), and adoptive brother, Harry (musician-actor RZA), into the very-bloody affair.
“Nobody” is directed by Russian musician and filmmaker
Ilya Naishuller, who garnered attention for the 2016 action romp “Hardcore Henry,” which borrowed heavily from first-personshooter video games — a gimmick that wore on many reviewers over the course of the movie.
His uneven direction here isn’t so unusual. He gets more out of certain action sequences than others, but — with the help of director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski (“Midsommer”) and other collaborators — ultimately delivers.
As with the direction, the script by Kolstad leaves you wanting a bit more, as if “Nobody” is missing a story element or two that would better tie together the affair.
That said, given its generous serving of action, it’s hard to criticize the movie running for only about an hour and a half. Any more may feel like an assault on the viewer.