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Nobody 2: A roaring return

Heroism is an innate virtue. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do to protect our loved ones — and most of us like to imagine we’d extend that same altruism to any innocent in danger. We fantasize about leaping into action, taking on an assassin, a horde of assassins, even an entire criminal syndicate, if that’s what it took. This primal instinct — this myth of the ordinary person pushed to extraordinary violence — is one writer, Derek Kolstad, understands intimately. It’s the conceit that powered John Wick, and it’s what makes his latest franchise, Nobody, just as compelling.

Kolstad’s 2021 film introduced us to Hutch Mansell, played with surprising grit and deadpan charm by Bob Odenkirk, the silver-tongued solicitor from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Hutch was a mild-mannered suburban father with a dormant past as a highly effective hitman. In Nobody 2, Kolstad’s latest film, he’s still trying to mop up the mess from the first movie — his evenings are spent carrying out routine hits for his bosses, much to the dismay of his wife and children.

It’s only when a seemingly straightforward snatch job, featuring a tightly choreographed elevator fight scene that exemplifies director Timo Tjahjanto’s punchy, kinetic style, goes sideways (thanks to the arrival of some unwanted Corsicans, which Mansell comically describes being armed to the teeth with Uzis and subsequent Brazilians wielding machetes), that Mansell decides he’s earned his PTO. He proposes a family vacation to Plummerville, a run-down middle-American waterpark where he once went as a boy.

Or so he thought. Turns out, Mansell’s dog tag-wearing, Cuban cigar-chomping father, played with endearing menace by Christopher Lloyd, was also a hitman in his heyday, and his childhood trip was just another cover for a contract kill.

Donning Hawaiian shirts, cargo shorts, and sandals, the Mansells set off on their ill-fated road trip. It’s not long before Hutch’s suburban veneer crumbles. Plummerville, we discover, is a waypoint in a cross-border smuggling operation (hence his father’s visit back in the day) — “Drugs pour in from Canada here,” one character explains.

There’s a poignant thread running through the film as Mansell tries, sometimes awkwardly, to impart wisdom to his son, lessons in patience, composure, and the virtue of de-escalation. After his son gets into a fight defending his sister, Mansell doesn’t moralize about the foibles of violence like some pacifist hippie. He explains that it should be a last resort, not an immediate instinct.

The tension between serene composure and unstoppable killing machine is what makes Kolstad’s protagonists so compelling. Whether it’s John Wick mourning his beagle or Hutch Mansell recovering his daughter’s lost kitty bracelet, these men aren’t bloodthirsty psychopaths. They have a proclivity for peace and are vying to put their violent past behind them. But push the wrong button, and their former selves come roaring back with a (highly entertaining) vengeance.

Despite the parallels, Odenkirk’s Mansell remains distinct from Keanu Reeves’s Wick. Nobody never attempts to replicate Wick’s surgically choreographed “gun-fu” speed shooting. Mansell absorbs far more punishment, often fighting from a glaring disadvantage, but compensates with improvisational craft — constructing bombs, setting traps, and manipulating his environment to his advantage.

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The film’s final act is a carnal amalgamation of John Wick and Home Alone, as Mansell takes on an entire mob within the crummy confines of the waterpark. Wave pools, ball pits, and their environs become sites of elaborate ambushes and brutal efficiency. The sequence is as cleverly staged as it is gleefully absurd, fulfilling darkly amusing and gory retribution.

For fans of the “you messed with the wrong guy” subgenre — The Equalizer, Taken, John WickNobody 2 is a lean, well-paced sequel that combines familiar thrills with flashes of fatherly restraint and familial wisdom.

Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds an MBA from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.

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