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Movie Review: Nobody

Mike Tyrkus

While the new film, Nobody, may bring to mind films like John Wick (2014) and Taken (2008), it serves its own hero rather well by delivering only a passing explanation of the “particular set of skills” that the hero ostensibly possesses and instead delivering the action with gleeful abandon.

After thieves break into his seemingly idyllic suburban home, Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) opts not to resort to violence to rid the home of the intruders. This disappoints his teenage son, Blake (Gage Monroe), who views him as a coward. Afterward, Hutch and his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen), begin to grow even further apart. Now, simmering with his checked rage, Hutch is again put in another brutal situation when the bus he takes every day to work is commandeered by a group of weapon-brandishing thugs who threaten all aboard. This triggers something within Hutch and the aforementioned skills come into play. Of course, this is not the end of the story as one of the individuals that Hutch has taken down, though not killed, is related to a Russian mobster (played by Aleksey Serebryakov) which leads to an assault on his family that Hutch must prevent.

Director Ilya Naishuller, whose kitschy Hardcore Henry (2015) showcased a wide-array of action tropes crammed into a small first-person perspective package, does an admirable job with the predictable story that he is given by the scribe of the “John Wick” films, Derek Kolstad. But the real winning move that Nobody makes is with the casting of Odenkirk. The Better Call Saul (2015-2022) star is pitch perfect as the everyman killing machine pushed just a little too far. Also along for a share of the fun and carnage is Christopher Lloyd as Hutch’s father, who helps make the third act the film’s tour de force.

Bob Odenkirk in “Nobody.” Photo Credit: Allen Fraser/Universal – © 2020 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. All Rights Reserved.

While it may hit all of the tropes of the typical action film, especially those of the ilk from which it is derived, Nobody delivers an enthralling tale of survival and solidifies Bob Odenkirk as a respectable action hero the way Die Hard (1988) did for Bruce Willis.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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