Main cast: Bob Odenkirk (Hutch Mansell), Connie Nielsen (Rebecca Mansell), Aleksei Serebryakov (Yulian Kuznetsov), RZA (Harry Mansell), Gage Munroe (Blake Mansell), Paisley Cadorath (Sammy Mansell), Michael Ironside (Eddie Williams), and Christopher Lloyd (David Mansell)
Director: Ilya Naishuller
The movie poster of Nobody looks very similar to that of John Wick: Chapter 2, which is quite audacious, considering that the two movies have nothing in common beyond the basic premise of a former assassin being unable to escape his past. This one is more down to earth compared to the John Wick movies, so maybe it’s not the best idea to lead fans of the latter films to think that they will get more of the same in this one. Some of them may end up disappointed.
The nobody in question is Hutch Mansell, a well-mannered fellow that tries to suppress his violent tendencies that made him such a good assassin when he was working for the CIA. Alas, incidents in this movie will soon pit him against a Russian crime lord. His family is in danger, but you know how it is. They are all going down, because nobody messes with Hutch and lives.
This movie is okay. Really, that’s all I can say about it. My overall reaction to this is a mild, pleasant kind of indifference. It’s well made, the cast does a good job, and there are some action scenes here and there to justify the existence of the movie.
I can’t get more enthused about this one because it’s so unmemorable. A big reason for this is how the movie utilizes so many overdone, bog-tired clichés found in such movies. Seriously, I physically cringe when I come across the inevitable slow-motion scene of the good guys firing away to some slow sappy song. How many action movies have done this to date? Way too many—the fact that this one uses this cliché (and many others) only make me wonder whether this is some kind of movie made by a committee that wants to emulate the success of movies like John Wick and more, but doesn’t want to tax their brains too hard to they’d just follow what those movies did. While everything here is well made, nothing in particular stands out in any way. The whole movie is just kind of… there.
In the end, Nobody is a prophetic title. It’s what it is: an okay movie that won’t hurt anyone’s feelings too much, as it does its thing with some semblance of dull, mechanical competency. Along the way, it manages to end up being so generic that I have to make an extra effort to remember anything about it, if I care to. Sadly, I don’t.
