It’s very weird seeing a clean-shaven Paul F Tomkins.
This was solid, I liked it. Not quite the same level of action choreography and flashy gunplay as a John Wick movie, but a similar tone, just as gritty, and fun performances by Odenkirk and Lloyd.
Plus a bit of Home Alone in the final act.
I liked this a lot. I particularly liked that it was 80-ish great minutes. No Snyder-level padding out to 120 minutes with a bunch of fat and gristle.
Ok if you said that had happened I’d probably be getting ready to watch this right now, but your review here put it on my “to watch” when previously I was not interested.
For an over-the-top parody, I would just watch I’m Gonna Git You Sucka for the nth time.
Or if you want something a little more contemporary, I thought Boss Level was pretty good.
I had high expectations for Nobody, but there is zero tension, and not enough humor to balance the lack of tension. And I really liked Hardcore Henry, which had more of both.
Ok, this was…fine. A little rote (Russian mobsters…ok), a little good (the bus fight was fun) and a little ridiculous at the end( both more than I wanted but also not enough), but most of all it was faintly embarrassing, a movie seemingly made for guys sliding off the back side of middle age who never had it to feel like they still got it.
I haven’t watched Shang Chi yet, but that bus fight was put out there for the talk show circuit. Nobody’s bus fight is way better.
I’m not sure if that’s a compliment for Nobody or an insult to Shang Chi.
I’d guess that depends if you appreciated Nobody’s bus fight. I loved it.
It was definitely the highlight of the movie. Everything leading up to it was pretty good, too.
Inconsistent is a good descriptor for Yulian, too. He’s a sociopath, but he also cares about his family (and not just as an extension of himself, clearly) and is “tired of the game?” He’s either a power hungry monster or not, the vague gestures at his relatability were not very convincing. Just a fairly weightless antagonist in general, and the ending was partly unbelievable for this reason, too, although I guess it gets points for ending with an approximation of my favorite way to get kills in Warzone (and he reacted to it the way ~80% of people I tried it on did, too).
Finally got to watch this over the weekend and was solidly entertained. Had a good time, but the third act took it a notch down for me.
Most of the action was… fine. The bus scene is the stand-out and probably the only really memorable one, but the rest was serviceable. Also, dug the cast. I was a Bob Odenkirk fan to begin with, and he’s good casting for the Geriaction genre since he’s more known for work in other disciplines. The rest of the cast? Fine as well, buuuuut…
… highly underutilized. Was delighted to see Michael Ironside’s name in the intro credits, and then he ends up being nothing but a extended cameo character who doesn’t even get to do anything particularly noteworthy. Connie Nielsen’s character amounts to ‘understanding wife’, and that’s it. It pales in comparison to John Wick (which I’m bringing up here since it was also written by Derek Kolstad) which manages to put some really capable actors like David Patrick Kelly, John Leguizamo or Lance Reddick into tiny yet really memorable roles.
The switch in tonality is what didn’t work well for me either. The bus scene felt a bit like a less extensive version of that certain action set piece from Atomic Blonde, the fight is pretty brutal, the people in it get really injured and also really, really exhausted, and our protagonist clearly is not invincible. (And hey, Daniel Bernard is in both of them!) But then Hutch nukes the Obshak on his own without that seemingly posing any sort of challenge. And by the time the Home Alone part of the movie kicked off, I never felt any sense of danger with regards to the good guys. I love Christopher Lloyd, but he’s clearly very old and not overly agile anymore, so the action bits with him felt a bit silly.
What the film did do, was overall entertaining; but it also left me pondering about what it didn’t do. The baddie was just wasted it. After that massive cliché scene in which he kills some random person to show how ruthless he is… pretty much nothing else is ever established about the character. There’s also barely any interaction between him and the protagonist. Unlike the mobster boss in John Wick who has a lot more going for him.
Also, you’d think the script would do something with Hutch’s desire to vent his frustration about his boring life and and that missing spark in his relationship with his wife. Could have been the story of someone yearning for a fight who ends up biting off more than he can chew; but Hutch is pretty much on top of everything for most of the movie, and ultimately everything pays off nicely with the Obshak being obliterated, the relationship with his wife improved and his children now knowing their father isn’t some weak chump.
Pretty much nobody has managed the cool mix of elements that elevated John Wick over just another revenge action thriller, including the John Wick sequels.
I did enjoy Nobody, but I was kind of expecting mild-mannered aging dad with no special set of skills having to rescue his family or something and got “secretly I’ve been a superspy the whole time and was trying to be normal but I guess that didn’t work!”, which is still pretty fun but is a fair bit more well-trodden.
The bus scene was fine by me, though a bit squicky, but I agree that most of the rest of the movie was pretty average.
Ha ha, you accidentally gave the marketers of Nobody a poster quote! :)