Nobody 2 drops us back in the world of Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk), but as opposed to the former operative drowning in a boring everyday life, we see a Hutch constantly on assignment—and therefore missing important time with his family.
He clearly loves being back in action, but the strain on his family relationships has Hutch looking for a break, so he decides to take his family on a vacation to Plumersville, where he has warm memories of vacationing with his father, David (Christopher Lloyd), and brother Harry (played as an adult by RZA). But it turns out those rose-colored memories were not all they seemed to be, as the vacation was just part of one of his father’s missions, and Hutch soon learns he has taken his family into the middle of a drug-smuggling operation led by a ruthless and psychotic woman named Lending (Sharon Stone).
Of course, Hutch and his family never would have crossed paths with that operation if it hadn’t been for his son Brady (Gage Munroe) getting involved in a fight with the son of one of the operation’s major players, Henry Wyatt (John Ortiz), and the corrupt local sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks). There’s a setup of Brady getting into fights and Hutch, with encouragement from his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), trying to convince Brady not to fight his way out of trouble — which of course is absurd coming from someone whose job is violence.
Hutch also can’t set that example for his son early on as a security guard slaps the head of his daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath). This leads to the scene shown partially in the trailers with Hutch wrecking shop in an arcade
And that’s basically the setup for this film, taking the basic idea of Odenkirk playing an unassuming middle-aged man who is secretly a one-man army. But as zany as that underlying premise is, the first movie did offset that to some degree with some gravitas and raw action that did not share in the absurdity.
This sequel sheds that seriousness and fully embraces the fun, leading to action sequences both thrilling and silly, such as the arcade fight and the fight on the “duck boat” that has been partially shown in trailers. We get Hutch whacking a guy with a whack-a-mole hammer, stuffing a man’s head into a plastic duck head before punching him and all kinds of fun visuals that lend a comedic hand to the action.
Hanks is good as a corrupt, rural sheriff whose ego far exceeds his intelligence. But Sharon Stone absolutely chews every bit of scenery as the major villain—to a degree that it honestly didn’t fully work for me even within the cartoony framework the movie provides. I think the villains of this franchise should remain somewhat serious as a kind of straight man to Hutch’s antics.
There is a conflict from the start between Hutch and Becca over how much he has been working and how he has been missing time with his family, but I appreciated how the movie ultimately resolved that arc.
The biggest trouble for this movie is that it’s just thin. At just 85 minutes, we actually move too quickly from set piece to set piece and don’t really give a lot of time for any serious family beats to help drive the action and comedy. But like Ballerina before it, you kind of just shrug off the plot issues for the sheer fun of the action.
The third act turns into a violent Home Alone setup at a water park, and the result is nearly as fun as it sounds. A few mistakes were made, perhaps, in showing too much of Hutch prepping the park for the showdown, robbing us of some surprise elements that could have been shown as things went down.
Overall, Nobody 2 is a really fun time at the theater, and I’d recommend fans of the first movie check this out on the big screen.
