Bob Odenkirk | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

The new movie “Nobody 2” is the sequel to “Nobody”, released in 2021. This movie is almost entirely about the most violent and awkward fight scenes in the history of cinema, with the huge bus fight in the first movie being one of the most insane and crazy fight scenes ever filmed.

With this new version, there are several fight scenes as long and as crazy as the first movie, with the main character, Hutch Mansell played by Bob Odenkirk, taking on as many as eight attackers all at the same time, and despite being about five feet nine and maybe 200 pounds, Hutch manages to win every time. What is always ridiculous about movies like this, including the “John Wick” series, is that with so many guns and so many attackers all attacking at the same time, there is no way any of these fights would not result in the instant death of Hutch Mansell. The solution to this is to try to make the action scenes more believable, rather than so insane, but after all, this is a movie.

There is not much of a plot for this second installment, other than Hutch and his family, including his wife, Becca Mansell played by Connie Nielsen, and his two kids, Sammy and Brady, played by Paisley Cadorath and Gage Munroe taking a trip to an amusement park, where the arguments and fights with the townspeople starting with Gage start within minutes of their arrival. One shove of Hutch’s daughter by one of the security guards, and the insane fighting starts, and is followed by several more fights, one in a boat that is almost as impressive as the bus fight in the first movie.

Hutch’s father David, is also in the sequel, played by Christopher Lloy,d and his brother, Harry played again by RZA make the majority of their appearances during the final action scenes that resolve a huge battle at the amusement park between an evil woman, who heads a drug cartel, named Lendina, played by Sharon Stone. Two men, Hutch and a former member of the cartel, Wyat Martin, played by John Ortiz, hold off about 25 of Lendina’s soldiers, making for a finale that will remind everyone of all the John Wick movies.

Nobody 2 is not as good as the original, but the well-choreographed action fight scenes and special effects are enough to make this a solid recommendation, and I agree with the 78% Rotten Tomatoes consensus.

The start of the new movie “Nobody” shows a collage of the main character Hutch Mansell, played by Bob Odenkirk – getting up in the morning, drinking coffee, forgetting to put out the garbage, running after the garbage truck, sitting in a boring and depressing office inside of a rundown factory while living a typical, mundane and at times an infuriating life of a middle aged man in the United States. We all often wonder where all the time goes, with so many of us in the world, because of the money, living the same typical days hundreds and thousands of times over. This collage showed better than any other movie that I have seen, the reality of life and making a living for so many millions of us.

As this story continues Hutch Mansell’s family are robbed at gunpoint in their home and despite Mansell’s previous special ops training, he does not take any action against the two armed robbers, who we later learn are husband and wife – poor and desperate trying to raise an infant child.

Over time, Mansell’s regret over doing nothing (despite the fact that given this robbery his lack of action was the best choice) – starts to eat at him, and his boring meaningless job make his anger grow to a fever pitch. Eventually Hutch takes action and he becomes a vigilante starting with some amazingly well filmed violence on a bus against 5 other guys. Odenkirk certainly does not have the size or physique to be an action star, but throughout this entire movie, he pulls off some very well done fight scenes.

One of the best messages of the film is the great way it shows the slow burn that all of us have inside of us, until we eventually break, until we cannot take it anymore – a great line from “Network”, 1976. In some cases some of us arrive at an irrational point that can be at times, even out of proportion to the outrage we have experienced. The expression, “going postal” also comes to mind in many extreme cases have all heard about in the news.

The acting in this movie is all outstanding, starting with Odenkirk, Connie Neilson, who plays Mansell’s wife, Aleksey Serebryakov who almost steals this movie as an insane Russian mobster and 82 year old Christopher Lloyd who is great as Mansell’s father who lives in a nursing home, but never forgot his hand to hand combat skills.

I agree with the high ratings of 80% for Nobody on Rotten Tomatoes, my rating is closer to 85% – and I highly recommend this movie.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zLeAG__P0Kk