Was anyone else surprised when Nobody 2 just got dumped into theatres? The cast barely did any press and we had little opportunity to see the trailer before we could book seats. Well, there’s no need to be curious about that anymore, the studio put no effort into their marketing because they knew what a turd this film is.

 

Nobody did a good job of taking the aesthetics of the John Wick franchise and minimising it into a smaller story about a dad with a past rather than the most badass assassin to ever live. For that reason people championed what was a grittier entry into the modern action canon. Is there anything original or inspiring in Nobody 2 to canonise it similarly? Unfortunately not.

 

The real superpower of the first film is the unassuming nature of Bob Odenkirk. It gets to play with the audience’s disbelief in this father’s ability to kick ass. The problem with the sequel is that now the audience knows all about Hutch Mansell and the writers have no new ideas to restock our intrigue.

 

The pitch for Nobody 2 must’ve been delivered with a shrug, “I guess they like go on vacation or something.”

 

That might be giving the writers too much credit because truthly, Nobody 2 has one of the laziest and most immature scripts of the last decade. 

 

Let’s get into it. Firstly the set-up is that Hutch is going on daily assignments neglecting his family so he can pay off the Russian mob for the cash he burnt in the last film. After noticing the familial disconnect Hutch decides they’ll go on a holiday to resolve this tension. Based on that inciting incident you’d think that the plot would revolve around people seeking revenge on Hutch missing payments. He is warned by Colin Salmon returning as “The Barber” that he can’t take a break. But nope, they just go on holiday and this predicament is never solved or even mentioned again. It is just there to give us a reason for an opening montage of Odenkirk punching goons. This is the real problem with the script.

 

The script has only two modes: montage or exposition. There’s no causality to the plot. We have scenes where we are told something and we have scenes with fights set to needledrops. The only way the exposition scenes have any bearing on the fights is to introduce an element one of the characters might use later. The worst example is when Becca (Connie Neilsen) takes Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) to see the wolf in a cage at the waterpark. That sentence doesn’t even seem to make sense but trust me it happens and the fact that a wolf is exhibited at a water park is not even the worst part. There’s zero reason for the scene to exist - no previous plot point led the characters here, it has no conflict, and it just ends. We literally just get told there’s a wolf here. THAT’S NOT A MOVIE SCENE.

 

So many times a scene starts and you say to yourself “oh I guess that character is there now.” I can’t fully blame the writers on this because it is glaringly obvious that the film was hacked to pieces in the edit. The studio must’ve been banking on people seeing that 89 minute runtime as a positive. But the shortness of the runtime is no benefit when you’ve sacrificed the plot’s coherency and rhythm. It felt like I could’ve watched a trilogy of films in that runtime.

 

Back to the script, the film’s only goal is to indulge in action scenes. There was some time spent crafting intricate oners so I have to give them credit for that, but the actual fights themselves aren’t all that interesting. There’s a boat fight which is just the first film’s bus set piece but worse, a fight in a warehouse that’s trying its best but feels useless and an arcade set piece that’s decent. 

 

You can’t even say that the fights make the film worth it because the climax is totally unoriginal and such a let down. Sharon Stone’s drug empire posse is coming for the Mansell family so they clear out the water park and booby trap it. Every trap though is just some explosive for nameless gunmen to step on and the film doesn’t take the time to show us where the traps are beforehand so there's no suspense to these moments. There's even the most cliched scene in a hall of mirrors where the gunmen continually shoot at Odenkirk’s moving reflection before a claymore goes off.

 

To really get at why this film doesn’t work though we need to look at what’s underneath the film’s surface. What are they trying to hide with all these montages and needledrops? Complete and utter immaturity.

 

Nobody 2 is essentially a send-up of repressed paternal rage. All of the family’s issues spawn from Hutch not being capable of processing his anger without using his fists but the film doesn’t reckon with this fact at all. Hutch is in no way punished and the film believes he has no reason to change. It’s totally ignoring the massive flaw of this character and pushing it aside to include more fights.

 

The real consequence of this is that all of the side characters don’t feel like real people. They all seem to think it’s okay too and barely push back at Hutch at all which makes none of them identifiable as real people - they’re plot functions. The best example of this is a scene where Becca rightfully berates Hutch for getting the family stuck at a police station for hours during their holiday. Hutch literally almost killed like twenty arcade employees but all of Becca’s anger goes out the window when she sees her husband brought them a bottle of wine to share. Apparently all it takes is one nice action to totally forgive your husband’s psychotic break.

 

This immaturity is where all of Nobody 2’s problems stem from. I could go on about Sharon Stone’s comedic graveyard of a performance or the fact that the end has two deus ex machinas, or how Colin Hanks has no screen presence but these issues are all secondary. The filmmakers are cowards too afraid to honestly tell a story about their subject and in doing so sacrificed almost every element of their film.