The workaholic assassin Hutch Mansell is in a funk as “Nobody 2” opens. He's sick of the daily grind, by which we mean he spends hours a day grinding people's skulls into mush. What about a family vacation?
“You need to have happy memories,” he tells his wife and kids. Unfortunately, no one in the theater will have a happy memory — or maybe even recall that they saw this C-level offering — by the time it's over, mercifully after less than 90 minutes. The movie opens in theaters Friday.
Bob Odenkirk makes another awkward stab as an assassin-turned-nice-guy in a sequel that still isn't funny or stylish enough to be anything but “John Wick Lite.” Is it a send-up? A riff? A new lane?
In a departure from this summer dominated by insanely larger-than-it-needs-to-be sequels — like “M3GAN 2.0 ” and “The Bad Guys 2” — “Nobody 2” concentrates not on global destruction but at a threadbare amusement park, Plummerville. (Christopher Plummer's estate really should sue.)
Odenkirk's Hutch thinks he can reconnect with his doubtful kids and frustrated wife (a dutiful Connie Nielsen) by going to the same place he had so much fun when he was a young lad. But there, they accidentally uncover a corrupt town, a police force led by an unconvincing baddie in Colin Hanks and a deeply evil criminal syndicate. Time to get killing again, kids.
Director Timo Tjahjanto, taking over from Ilya Naishuller, abandons the more dark, noirish vibe of the original in favor of a more “National Lampoon’s Vacation” feeling, only if that was drenched in blood and amputations. There's even duck boats now, albeit with goons impaled by an anchor and buoy.
The lighter setting means we can see heads smashed into a pinball machine or a Whack-a-Mole game by an ordinary looking dad in a Hawaiian shirt. The violence escalates so fast that we are soon dealing with stacks of shrink-wrapped currency and huge oil drums helpfully labeled “Explosive Material.”
The screenplay by a returning Derek Kolstad — and Aaron Rabin — seems to want to talk about violence as an inherent trait and how it can pass through generations. When Hutch's son gets into a brawl, dad is unhappy. “There are other ways to handle things,” he says. “You have to be better than your old man.”
Even the criminal organization head, who has Hutch working off a $30 million debt from the first movie, is unconvinced that his prized assassin can even stop killing. “Nature always wins,” he tells Hutch.
“Nobody 2” draws from a rich mine of macho wish-fulfillment fantasy dug by the likes of Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. But too often, Odenkirk is stuck in a no-man's land between real action hero and comic relief without a punchline. Fans of the 2021 original will note echoes — like the duck boat fight mimicking the bus fight of the first movie and another scene in which currency is lit on fire.
The person having the best time seems to be Sharon Stone, who is an absolute psychotic in tailored men's clothes and slicked back hair as she pets a bulldog and stabs at people. “Scorched earth,” she tells a flunky. “No survivors.”
Christopher Lloyd makes a baffling cameo — he has a few quick scenes and then simply disappears — and RZA returns for a Japanese-inspired martial arts battle tacked on at the end that feels forced onto a peanuts-and-Cracker Jack movie.
“Nobody 2” climaxes in a sort of R-rated “Home Alone,” where the good guys make deadly all the things we love about amusement parks or county fairs: The Ferris wheel is booby-trapped to hit you in the face, the ball pit has a tripwire to a landmine, the water slide has knives sticking out of it and the hall of mirrors is a way to confuse the thugs as they unload all their bullets. Happy summer, America.
Somebody, anybody, should drag Odenkirk away from this nobody franchise.
“Nobody 2,” a Universal Pictures release that's only in theaters Friday, is rated R for “strong bloody violence, and language throughout.” Running time: 89 minutes. One star out of four.
Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press
