If you’ve ever wondered what a mash-up of the Home Alone and National Lampoon’s Vacation franchises created by the producers of the John Wick movies might look like, Nobody 2 is the movie you’ve been waiting for. Stripped of the twists and surprises that made the first one such a sleeper hit, this sequel nonetheless delivers breezy, bone-crushing entertainment for undemanding late-summer audiences.
Unlikely action hero Bob Odenkirk returns as Hutch; in the first movie, he was a put-upon accountant stuck in a rut until he returned to his former super-assassin ways, and this time around, he’s back in that same rut, taking down goons and bodyguards all day and into the night when he could be spending quality time with wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and kids Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Codorath). So even though he’s working off a massive debt to his shadowy employers — they’re making him pay back that giant stack of money he set ablaze in the previous movie — he announces he’s taking a vacation.
His choice of holiday destinations is the town of Plummerville, the site of Hutch’s one happy childhood memory, from a vacation he took with his father (Christopher Lloyd) and brother Harry (RZA). With Dad in the backseat, Hutch and his brood head off to the ramshackle resort town, which of course turns out to be a front for all manner of nefarious activity, coordinated by town mayor Wyatt (John Ortiz), corrupt sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks, whose character’s villainy is matched only by his truly unfortunate haircut), and most terrifying of all, mob boss Lendina (Sharon Stone). Hutch doesn’t want trouble, but it finds him and his family nonetheless.
There’s a lot of Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold in Hutch’s plea that he just wants to make memories with his wife and kids; these complaints are usually lodged after he’s just punched out Abel’s deputies and various other local goons. And while returning screenwriter Derek Kolstad doesn’t get to dig into Hutch’s inner life as deeply this time, he and co-writer Aaron Rabin — along with director Timo Tjahjanto (the “New Indonesian Extreme” auteur makes his English-language debut) and a talented team of stunt coordinators — instead pour their creativity into turning Summerville’s carnival midway into a deadly series of booby-traps that Kevin McCallister would admire.
Part of the joke of Nobody was that Odenkirk and Nielsen were far more capable performers than you would expect to see in such a violently stylized movie, so it makes sense that the film ups the ante with Ortiz, who brings surprising levels of empathy to a character introduced as a villain, and Hanks, clearly enjoying the chance to chuck his nice-guy image to play a small-town sociopath. Stone absolutely understands that no subtlety is required here, and so she offers none, instead taking a big bite out of this wonderfully campy villain and luxuriating in her sadistic wickedness.
Editor Elísabet Rolandsdóttir (The Fall Guy) makes each set piece pop, from the escalation of a warehouse fight (with another oh-so-flammable pile of money) to the grand finale involving that midway and a parallel action locale miles away. She keeps Tjahjanto’s florid flourishes of mayhem grounded in time and place, upping the suspense and making the big moments of destruction all the more satisfying.
Nobody needed a Nobody sequel, since the reveals about its buttoned-down lead were its most entertaining elements. But for a film that plugs that same lead into some silly and entertaining carnage, Nobody 2 makes the most of this unnecessary opportunity.
Director: Timo Tjahjanto
Screenwriters: Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin, based on characters created by Derek Kolstad
Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, John Ortiz, Colin Hanks, RZA, Christopher Lloyd, Sharon Stone
Producers: Kelly McCormack, David Leitch, Marc Provissiero, Braden Aftergood, Bob Odenkirk
Executive producers: David Hyman, Derek Kolstad, Tobey Maguire
Cinematographer: Callan Green
Production design: Michael Diner
Editing: Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir
Music: Dominic Lewis
Sound design: Gregorio Gomez, Patrick Haskill, Ryan Nowak, sound designers
Production companies: Universal Pictures, 87 North, Eighty Two Films, OPE Partners
In English
89 minutes
