Nobody 2 (Theatrical)

Nobody opened in the early half of 2021 when the pandemic was clearing up, but the theater business wasn’t quite where it needed to be. Still, the film did modest enough business to warrant a sequel. Arriving little over four years later, the sequel gives us what we can expect even though I still think it falls short of the original film. There’s some fun to be had here even if the film feels largely unnecessary and fizzles out before the closing credits. It’s still nice to see a straight up action flick that doesn’t try to do too much to win over its audience.

We catch up with Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) in a similar sequence as the first film opened. He’s being questioned by some officers about just what happened. It’s here that we then get a further recap. One can see that the man is tired just by the looks of him, but he also expresses this. As a way of paying debts owed to the Barber (Colin Salmon), he must accept assignments. To say that he’ successful as what he does would be a massive understatement, even if the work his work can be quite messy and have a large body count. Hutch decides it’s time for a vacation, so he takes his family to a vacation spot that he went to as a child. Returning cast member include Christopher Llyod as his father, Connie Nielson as his wife as well as his kids, Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath). Things seem to be going OK until Hutch has a run in with the town Sheriff named Abel, played by Colin Hanks. There is a bit of conflict with Hutch’s son speaking to a girl and her boyfriend takes it as flirting and the two get into a scuffle. In short: They don’t want Hutch in their town as he is causing a scene and may discover just what secret the town really harvests. The villain this time around is Lendina, played by Sharon Stone. From the moment we meet her, we learn that she means business. I found it amusing that her first big sequence is as she catches a man cheating in a casino when Stone herself starred in the film, Casino. While I am a fan of the actress (even admitting she was a celebrity crush at one time), I am unsure of her performance here. She seems to be having fun with the role, but her character simply can’ t shake the feeling of feeling cliched.

Nobody 2 is a lean, mean action machine that knows exactly what to give its audience. While it’s a sequel, it did remind me of that kind of disposable 90’s action flicks that you’d see, enjoy and forget all about on the ride home. It has a lot of powerful moments. I especially liked the earlier scenes with Hutch wondering how his son got a bruise around his eye, and the early scenes when the vacation begins. There’s even a fun action sequence on a small boat that’s intense enough but also adds some humor. Somewhere along the way, however, I felt the film just run out of steam. It’s under 90 minutes long, but the climax where our characters rig a water park as they await the villains just gets boring. There’s a predictability to it and the fun I was having with the film decreased as it went through the motions. By no means is this terrible, but it can’t shake the feeling of redundancy. I didn’t hate it, but I think I will always return to the first film before this. I do believe there’s still life in this series, but the third film needs a new angle.

Nobody 2 remained fun for a large portion of it, but I felt the climax became routine and predictable. It’s such a slight film that you’ll forget about it as soon as it’s over. This also puts a feeling of redundancy into play. I enjoy these characters enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing more of them, but if a third film is greenlit, they need to shake up the formula a bit.