Nobody - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

As we move through this life, sometimes certain patterns develop, routines are created, monotony can set in and you can eventually feel like your in a rut. Your existence is trapped in a never ending cycle of dull and unproductive behavior and there doesn’t seem to be any way out. In walks Nobody, a film about one such individual that is stuck in a life of routine and monotony. Despite that premise, Nobody is a fast paced, brutally realistic action film that is a hell of a lot of fun and although a bit predictable, does do enough inventive and interesting things that make it enjoyable for almost anyone. While this film isn’t perfect, the tight one hour and thirty-two minute runtime helps this lean, mean, fighting machine stay focused and engaging. You may just be surprised how much fun you can have hanging out with Nobody.

Right after the first scene of a badly beaten up Hutch (Bob Odenkirk), being asked by a police detective “Who the f*** are you?”, the film does some effective, rapid fire editing, showing us some weeks in the life of and routines of this man. We see him cooking eggs for his kids, entering numbers in a spreadsheet, chasing the garbage truck, doing pull-ups and crawling in bed with a pillow set in between him and his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen). But this life of boring routines quickly morphs when Hutch and his son confront a couple who broke into their home. We start to get the sense that Hutch is no ordinary person when he leaves the next night to track down the thieves and at gunpoint demands they return a stolen watch. After getting the watch, he catches a bus home and more or less picks a fight with a gang of five thugs in order to ensure a fellow bus rider gets home safe. One of the most brutally realistic fist fight sequences in recent cinema ensues. Fortunately or unfortunately for Hutch, you’re not sure what he’d prefer, one of the bus riders that got a beat down happened to be the younger brother of a Russian lounge singer Yulian (Aleksei Serebryakov), who moonlights as a high ranking Russian mafia boss who's protecting the mafia’s hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. Predictably a war ensues between Hutch and Yulian, each trying to wipe the other off the face of the earth.

By the final fight sequence, there’s Russian mobsters and thugs running through Hutch’s machine shop of booby traps in a version of Home Alone that is way more gruesome and would’ve had Harry and Marv thanking their lucky stars they only dealt with Kevin McCallister. During the fights in the film, the camerawork does an excellent job of effectively pulling you into the fight and keeping the film very grounded in it’s realistic violence and not the John Wick or Gunpowder Milkshake alternate universe ultraviolence. The screenplay is fairly standard with some decent one liners and witty exchanges, although more humor could’ve probably been worked in and some plot holes took a little from the realism they were going for. But Bob Odenkirk going full throttle does a lot of heavy lifting for the film, he fits the role of Hutch amazingly well, he adds so much in terms of the film entertainment value. With enough of the movie’s other elements done well, including the songs it incorporates, even if they’re not spectacular, it’s all good and coming along for the ride that Bob is ready to take us on.

SUMMARY - With so many violent, revenge thrillers being a staple of the modern pantheon of films available, you could do better than Nobody, but you could also do much, much worse. It may not be exceedingly deep and plot driven but it’s well constructed, fantastically paced and Nobody could’ve guessed how much fun it would be to watch . . . Bob Odenkirk. You thought I was going to say Nobody again, didn’t you?