Bob Odenkirk’s career is an escalating series of events that find him proving that he can do just about anything on screen. Already minted as a comedy legend from his time making Mr. Show with Bob and David, becoming Saul Goodman gave his career an exciting second act. When Breaking Bad ended, people were skeptical that the character could carry his own show. Not only did Odenkirk pull it off, but many fans and critics were convinced that Better Call Saul improved upon its predecessor. By the time Nobody came around, you heard Bob Odenkirk playing a suburban dad spin on John Wick, and you just said, “Sure, why not?” It worked well enough to garner a sequel, and Nobody 2 pays off just enough to be worth your time.
Nobody 2 follows Odenkirk as Hutch Mansell, a retired special operative who is now taking missions on as a means to pay off debts from the previous film. Hutch is married to Becca, played by Connie Nielsen, and the two decide they need a vacation so he can take a break from his work. Packing up the kids and Hutch’s father, a comedic highlight played by Christopher Lloyd, they travel to a small town with an amusement park as its central draw. The town has a dark secret that places Hutch right back in the center of the very action he wanted to get away from.
Nobody was a hardcore thrill ride, and the sequel is more of a family affair. There’s still enough bone-snapping action to satisfy the action junkies, but Nobody 2 takes a gentler approach. The violence is more tame, and the action beats are inherently more comedic. This is a surprise considering the resume of director Timo Tjhajanto, an Indonesian filmmaker whose works such as The Night Comes For Us are known for stylized, hyper-gory action set pieces. Nobody 2 is his first outright feature in the Hollywood system, and it unfortunately feels a bit too assimilated to American action movie standards. Tjhajanto’s work in Indonesia is vibrant and wall-to-wall action packed, but even when Nobody 2 has its grizzlier moments, they pale in comparison to what Tjhajanto has put together in prior films.
The action is still a slight improvement on the first. The added layers of humor and the backdrop of a family vacation make for a dynamic and fun action comedy, no doubt taking some influence from the tone of Jackie Chan’s Police Story films. It is a better sequel on a technical level but doesn’t cut together quite as well as a story.
First derivative of The Equalizer or John Wick, the slight wrinkle that this guy is trying, poorly, to maintain a family life while all this is going on is the key ingredient that set Nobody apart. Nobody 2 doesn’t take any steps further in characterizing Hutch or his family, and it is paced so rapidly that you never have much time to care about the arc of the characters. It essentially retreads the same familial beats from the first, almost out of obligation so that the characters have anything to latch onto other than the fun action. The third act prep-for-battle montage comes just over an hour in, and the credits are rolling twenty minutes later. The film moves too fast to keep up with the plot, and the result is a film with underdeveloped characters, especially on the villain front. Sharon Stone is lost at sea with a performance that oscillates between wanting to play for camp and wanting to play for genuine intimidation. Neither mode works, leaving the main antagonist of the film in an uncanny valley of stale villainy that makes no impression and is introduced too late into the movie to matter.
The bottom line is that these movies don’t need to do much to be worthwhile. You take a simple premise, you execute a few good action sequences, leave room to laugh between, and you’re good. Nobody is a dad-porn franchise, the kind that excels simply by allowing your 62-year-old father to see a capable and charming guy in his own age bracket kicking ass indiscriminately. Liam Neeson did it for years, so there’s no reason Odenkirk can’t squeeze at least another movie out of this thing before the Nobody well is dried. It is not an improvement on the first. The sequel reprioritizes things in such a way that the two more or less even out. But if you need your action fix, or you want to just enjoy a breezy, 90-minute thrillride, Nobody 2 is here to deliver.
6 out of 10
This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2025.
