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Nobody's Home

In retrospect, the smartest thing about Nobody was that it tapped into a natural though vacant space of the modern action genre. Really, all that writer Derek Kolstad stumbled upon was the fact that in that action lane, already pretty diminished in the modern Hollywood landscape, there were no movies centred on the average joe. John Wick, Ethan Hunt, Dominic Toretto -these are not ordinary people that the audience has any real chance of relating to. And it’s not like such characters are an anomaly for the action genre historically, it’s of course famously the thing that made Die Hard’s John McClane so compelling. And so Nobody simply taps into that old well by allowing for a working-class suburban dad to be an action hero.
But that novelty really can only go so far, as most of the Die Hard sequels proved and to a degree Nobody 2 does as well. To compensate for this it throws its protagonist Hutch Mansell, once again played by Bob Odenkirk, into an even more domesticated setting -a family holiday, to wring from that more fun contrasts between this unassuming man, his world, and the extreme violence he is capable of when faced with conflict.
As a consequence of his actions in the previous film, Hutch is basically a full-time contract killer by the start of this story, to his and his family’s exhaustion, wherein a rift is forming. In an attempt to simmer things, he plans a family vacation to Plummerville, site of an amusement park (dubiously claimed to be America’s first water-park) that he remembers fondly from a singular vacation in his childhood. Of course once the family is there, Hutch can’t help but let his darker side out in response to both passive-aggressive overtures towards his family and the actions of an elaborate, violent crime syndicate that controls the town.
The movie is directed by Indonesian action-horror filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto in his American debut, and he holds well enough to the fundamental irony of the premise, which essentially grafts hardcore action onto the plot of National Lampoon’s Vacation -a movie that is intentionally alluded to a few times (not least of all in its theme song scoring the film trailer). The novelty is stressed in things like intense fight scenes set on a riverboat or in an arcade (where at one point a Whac-a-Mole mallet is substituted for an actual weapon), and Hutch frequently dispensing to his adversaries his mere desire to have a nice family vacation and “create memories”, even as he’s beating them to a pulp. But these never really carry the punch that Hutch gives them, the situational contrast for the most part a bit paired back by the desire to create the effect of the first film -the riverboat sequence specifically is a blatant retread of the bus fight -arguably the best signature set-piece of the first movie- though it feels less inventive or visually spontaneous. Sure, Hutch utilizes well the tools and environment around him, like a floating ring and a water pole, but it’s not particularly staged uniquely to its setting, the action feels less kinetic and dynamic than in the prior film.
There is also the fact that Odenkirk’s average guy attitude and demeanour isn’t so effective on its own. He remains a great fit for this kind of part -still among the least conventional action protagonists; but the sense of spontaneity is hard to replicate, except through other characters underestimating him. These include a corrupt police officer played by Colin Hanks, similarly cast against type, the goons who work for him, and eventually the mob kingpin played by Sharon Stone. But the reactions of such adversaries isn’t really enough, and the tiredness of Odenkirk’s performance (intentional, it should be noted) doesn’t have the desired effect of making him seem like any more of an underdog. The mere fact that this is his job now dilutes that a good degree.
And as for the character stakes, how this dark side of Hutch is impacting his family, the film raises but chooses not to resolve in a real way. Whether it is his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) feeling more frustrated and distant as this side of his personality takes up more and more of his time, or his son Brady (Gage Munroe) taking after him by getting into fights -when Hutch tries to impart to his son that violence isn’t the answer he has no ground to stand on and Brady knows it. These points of contention however are swept aside fairly neatly by the last act, with Hutch’s violent inclinations excused and justified by his family, allowing him to not have to deal with any personal growth. It’s as though Kolstad decided halfway through the writing process that this wasn’t a theme he was able to handle within the movie he was writing so he merely buried it in the hopes the audience wouldn’t notice. To compensate he allows for Becca to be a badass herself at the eleventh hour.
That is the point of the film though, in the heart of the climax, that I suspect the whole story was reverse-engineered around. And it happens to be the action high point. Much of it flatly recycles the equivalent set-piece of the previous film, bringing in both Hutch's brother Harry (RZA) and his father David (Christopher Lloyd) -who is carried along for the trip yet spends most of the film at an isolated lodge off the Plummerville premises- and having them booby-trap much of the vicinity in expectation of an army of enforcers. Both sequences are even predicated on Hutch making a show of casually destroying a fortune in cash. The only real distinction is the setting, and a theme park just makes for a naturally more interesting space to stage this kind of action than a warehouse. There is some fun stuff to this: a square-off in a house of mirrors, a goofy escape down a waterslide -both of which recall Home Alone in their invention and madness quite starkly. This area of the movie is way more open to wild leaps of action logic (especially in the final confrontation), and clearly Tjahjanto enjoys that more. But it does feel dissonant and aimless in context, especially when something like even Kolstad's other creation John Wick -blatantly more over-the-top- would never go so ridiculous as in the bit that ends this movie.
Nobody 2 never manages to recapture the same charm as its predecessor, even in a more ostensibly engaging environment. Its efforts at dramatic stakes and character tensions feel disingenuous, the plotting formulaic, and the action scenes themselves repetitious, even where creative improvements are made. Odenkirk delivers well on the tiredness of his character, but his necessary rage is less palpable -its incentives less believable. What it has in some genuine summer atmosphere it lacks in new summer thrills, catering ultimately to nobody.

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