Nobody 2: More Hit Than Miss

We live in an age of movies trying too hard to be funny, so arguably the best thing about Nobody 2 is its subtle wit. We know how these movies work, and Nobody 2 knows that we know. We know how the violence and the humor and the family drama work, and there's a distinct satisfaction to be had in what's essentially barely nostalgic cinematic comfort food. There's no two ways to cut the cake; Nobody 2 is a fun movie. Nevertheless, it's not hard to see that something is missing here that wasn't missing before. The first Nobody was a triumph of both tone and genre subversion, very much like John Wick but with dirty hands and a hangover. This sequel, while brashly entertaining and competently made, lacks the dark spark of the first one and settles instead for a decidedly more pedestrian tone. It's everything that the first movie was, but with a third of the personality cut out. Still, I'm willing to forgive a lot of these shortcomings because of the fact that I finally got to watch National Lampoon's Family Vacation With Guns, something I didn't know I needed to see.

Even assassins need time off, and so Hutch Mansell packs his family into the car and drives them all to Plummersville, an old tourist town with a waterpark he has fond memories of from his childhood. However, things have changed in Plummersville since Hutch was a wee lad, and sooner rather than later, he and his family find themselves entangled in a web of crooked theme park operators, corrupt cops, and Lendina, a shady and twisted woman who runs this strange circus of a criminal empire. This is an odd sight to see, and one question I had when I saw it was, who in the world comes up with this kind of thing? Another was, and why does this new tone feel so empty? Nobody 2 is a decidedly cheerier-looking movie than the first, and while I can understand a sequel wanting to look different, even if just for the sake of looking different, I miss the moodiness of the first Nobody. Seeing contemporary America look as unfamiliar as that was special, and that dark spark is missing in this sequel. I've heard this movie unfavorably compared to a song cover, and I think that's an apt comparison. The almost-vanilla tones are hard to miss.

Nevertheless, while the tone is less impactful, the fight scenes haven't lost their spark. They're filled with both kinetic and hard-hitting energy, as well as a cheerfully devious and very violent creativity. Both will be familiar if you've seen the first movie. Hutch remains a mostly interesting and well-acted character that the filmmakers knew would come across as a joke about Saul Goodman, and while this sequel is more of the same, and not much more, that's about what I expected it to be, and it works because the same is still a lot of fun. It isn't exactly high art, but it's also near-impossible to wholeheartedly dislike.

The edges of this movie are rough, but they belie a surprising sweetness curled up just beneath the surface of Nobody 2, a sweetness that sometimes peeks out in some heartfelt ways. This is a movie about family, and while that's not a super-complex theme by any stretch, it works well enough, not because of any intricate ideas this movie explores, but rather because of how it addresses the simple things in life. But let's be honest, dang it. You didn't come here to watch sentimental family drama. You came here to watch Saul Goodman in a bad mood on a bad day, and this movie will give you a lot of bang for your buck in that regard, even if it does sometimes make the occasional sweetness of the movie feel tacked-on. This isn't at all a flaw on the part of the characters in this movie or their performances, but I often noticed that Nobody 2 was sometimes a movie with two competing tones pulling me in two different directions, but mostly a movie with one shade that's trying to be more than it is; it's an action movie that doesn't fully know how to make the sentimental pieces mesh.

All in all, this movie is a bit confused about its tone, which surprised me, given how confidently its predecessor allowed itself to look and feel. The big selling point of the first Nobody was its ability to make the familiar feel foreign again, and that's just completely missing here. It's by design, but it's a faulty design. Nobody 2 is a relatively standard action movie that probably wouldn't have garnered so much press if it weren't a Nobody movie. That's not to say that it's bad, just that it's not as interesting as it should be. The first Nobody was a cool riff on action movies. The second is just an action movie. Still, it's a really funny action movie dropped into a world of action movies trying to be funny. I get that humor is subjective, but this sequel certainly hasn't lost the wit of the first one, and I'd go so far as to say that it's even a little funnier than before. Numerous clever visual gags in this movie belie the bone-crunching violence, much like a joke-cracking, nose-crushing yin and yang. Between the humor, the setpieces, and the occasionally out-of-place yet fully sincere heart, this movie eventually won me over, even if it was working a lot harder than it had to with inferior tools.

Nobody 2 - 6/10

Mark 10:6-9