The chaotic climax of Timo Tjahjanto’s “Nobody 2” is choreographed to a truly horrendous rock version of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” which is when the reason this sequel is so boring hit me: it’s a cover. It has some of the same melodies, a lot of the same lyrics, and a desperate edge that’s reminiscent of a nü-metal band doing a much-better tune than they’ve ever written on their own.
The biggest problem with “Nobody 2” is that the surprise factor is gone, and nothing has taken its place. The wow of seeing a generally comedic actor like Bob Odenkirk go John Wick in the fun 2021 sleeper hit isn’t there anymore. Still, writers Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin can’t find anything to give the film the missing charge of the new. No one’s heart is in it, even as other body parts are severely damaged.
The first film’s premise of a man with a very special set of skills forced to go straight in a job and possibly even a marriage that he hates isn’t really replicable, and so the sequel sees Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) in full Jason Bourne mode, dispatching bad guys for “The Barber” (Colin Salmon) in order to pay off the debt he incurred when he burned the Russian mob’s money at the end of the first flick. The idea that Hutch’s workaholic nature transfers from his ordinary job to his rekindled black ops work, tearing apart his marriage to Becca (Connie Nielsen) just the same, is a pretty good start. If the first movie was about an ordinary guy who turned out to be a killing machine, the second could be about a killing machine who learns how to be an ordinary guy. Nah.
Instead, the Mansells, including son Brady (Gage Munroe), daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath), and pop David (Christopher Lloyd, so fun in the first movie and depressingly a total non-factor here), head to a small town called Plummerville, the only place that Hutch can remember going on vacation as a child. One of those small towns built around the tourist season that dot the heartland—for Chicago locals, think the Wisconsin Dells but much smaller—Plummerville is really just a front for a criminal operation being run by a theme park operator named Wyatt (John Ortiz) and the town sheriff, Abel (Colin Hanks, who often looks visibly bored). They both work for a mysterious figure named Lendina (Sharon Stone), who has to come deal with the cleanup after Hutch unleashes another one of his vengeful waves on her operation.
Much like the first film, the real conflict begins simply enough with a fight at an arcade, meant to mimic the public transportation showdown, but with whack-a-mole instead of bus poles. That bravura sequence’s improvisational approach to action is repeated over and over again here, turning Hutch into something of a Super-MacGyver, a guy who can fight his way out of any situation with whatever is around him. Tjahjanto is an undeniable talent when it comes to directing melee action—“The Night Comes For Us” is a must-see and most of “The Big 4” was fun—but his brand of unchecked insanity feels almost restrained here. It may seem crazy to say, given how many bodies are chopped, burned, and blown up, but it all feels relatively harmless, an action programmer that’s already been pre-sold to TNT for repeat airings. The first film was so full of surprising beats, from the premise to RZA to Doc Brown with a shotgun, but there’s none of that energy here. Everyone goes through the motions, even Odenkirk, who seems significantly more bored than he was the first time around. He’s incapable of being bad, but he looks more nonplussed this time, like a comedian who has told the same punchline at too many shows.
Aspects of “Nobody 2” flirt with parody, an approach that would have worked if Tjahjanto and company had committed to it. A sort of “National Lampoon’s John Wick” that turns Clark Griswold into a killing machine has a lot of promise on paper; some of the action beats in “Nobody 2” are so broad that it feels like they’re meant to be ridiculous, and I don’t just mean the fight aboard a duck boat that uses everything in Hutch’s reach as a weapon. In one scene, piles of Lendina’s cash are just sitting in a warehouse next to a few barrels labeled Explosive Material. Why they’re there is anyone’s guess. It’s a tiny rewrite away from being a scene out of the new “The Naked Gun.”
“Nobody” breathed life into a classic action template: the ordinary guy who isn’t quite so ordinary. “Nobody 2” looks at all the places that the story could go after the end of the first chapter and doesn’t take any of them. There’s an old saying that one should review the movie they’ve seen and not the one in their head. This is true. But the one in my head is so much better.
