Nobody 2: Escapist wretched excess

Nobody 2 (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for relentless profanity and strong, bloody violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.17.25 

This is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

 

Director Timo Tjahjanto’s deplorably violent thriller is palatable solely because of the macabre dark humor in Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin’s crazy script, and the hilariously stoic performance by star Bob Odenkirk.

 

Four men get into an elevator, followed by the apparently mild-mannered Hutch Mansell
(Bob Odenkirk, center). How many will survive the trip?

The result is so excessively outrageous, that you can’t help laughing ... although you’ll likely feel guilty for having done so, when later describing this film to more conservative friends.

In this film’s 2021 predecessor, Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) was introduced as a mundane office worker whose bland life concealed the fact that he was a former “auditor” (assassin) employed by the U.S. Intelligence Community. His ordinary existence — alongside emotionally starved wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), teenage son Brady (Gage Munroe) and adolescent daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) — was interrupted by “events beyond his control.” In the aftermath, he and his family began anew.

 

Except not really, as this sequel quickly makes clear. A fleeting prologue, mimicking an identical scene in the earlier film, finds a bruised and badly damaged Hutch being interrogated by FBI agents ... this time alongside a large dog with a soulful gaze.

 

One bewildered agent asks, “Who are you?,” prompting Hutch to respond via a long flashback.

 

Things having gone very wrong during the intervening years, Hutch now spends his days “processing” assignments for “The Barber” (Colin Salmon), his former government handler. Hutch is slowly working off a $30 million debt incurred when he earlier destroyed the Russian Mob’s cash reserve.

 

Sadly, the constant daily grind — skirmishes, fights, all-out melees — have taken a toll on Hutch’s marriage and home life. He barely sees his wife and children, and Becca — fully aware of what he does, although this is kept from their children — flirts with the notion of leaving him.

 

Hutch isn’t blind; he recognizes the need to make amends. He therefore proposes a vacation to Wild Bill’s Majestic Midway and Waterpark, a family-friendly theme park in nearby Plummerville. It was the one and only place where Hutch and his brother Harry went on vacation as kids. In short, it’s one of Hutch’s few happy childhood memories.

 

(Filming actually took place in Winnipeg, Manitoba; production designer Michael Diner was inspired by classic Midwestern Americana burgs like the Wisconsin Dells, where Odenkirk’s family vacationed when he was a kid.)

 

The Barber tolerates this brief respite, albeit with a warning: “Wherever you go, you’ll be you.”

 

Meaning, Hutch can’t help finding trouble that needs to be extinguished.

The Tender Bar: Wisdom served wry

The Tender Bar (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for considerable profanity and some sexual candor

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.21.22

The best coming-of-age stories possess a carefully calculated blend of warmth and gentle humor, along with the beating heart of such sagas: the relationship between mentor and mentee.

 

J.R. (Daniel Ranieri, left) soon realizes that school books aren't the sole source of
education. Some of life's best lessons come in a bowling alley, particularly when the
wisdom is dispensed by the boy's doting Uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck).

Director George Clooney’s precise touch with The Tender Bar absolutely honors the tone of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer’s best-selling memoir, with its rich cast of quirky characters. At times, this feels like a modern, true-life Charles Dickens story: not a surprise, since books — and particularly Dickens — play an important role.

I only wish William Monahan’s screenplay had done a better job with Moehringer’s book. Condensing a 384-page tome into a 106-minute film obviously requires compromise, but — due to an ill-advised narrative decision — viewers likely will be dissatisfied with the result.

 

The story begins in 1972, as 9-year-old J.R. (Daniel Ranieri) spends hours each day scanning radio channels for “The Voice,” as he calls the deadbeat DJ father who deserted him and his mother Dorothy (Lily Rabe) years earlier. Despite her best efforts, she can’t make ends meet; reluctantly, she packs J.R. and their meager possessions into a car and drives to Manhasset, Long Island, returning to the now-dilapidated house where she grew up.

 

The homecoming isn’t entirely welcoming. Her curmudgeonly and unapologetically blunt father (Christopher Lloyd) views this as a sign of failure; we get a sense that he never forgave Dorothy the mistake of having taken up with her ex-husband. Her mother (Sondra James) is more cordial; her brother Charlie (Ben Affleck), still living with his parents — also to his father’s disgust — is pragmatic and sympathetic.

 

To J.R. — who goes by those initials because he’s actually a junior, which he refuses to acknowledge — Charlie is Uncle Charlie: an attentive, doting purveyor of wisdom and sage advice. J.R. does not want for love; Dorothy is fiercely protective, and a great believer in his potential — she repeatedly insists that he’ll one day go to Yale — but she also battles chronic depression.

 

Laid-back Uncle Charlie takes the edge off. While his approach to “parenting” probably wouldn’t win the approval of Social Services, he’s just what J.R. needs.

 

Affleck’s performance is sublime. Charlie is a self-educated truth-seeker with a closet full of classic books — this fascinates J.R. — and he works as a bartender at a local pub called Dickens, where additional stacks of books vie for space with the colorful liquor bottles. Affleck’s bearing is charismatic; it’s no surprise that the bar regulars hang on his every word, just as J.R. does.

 

Affleck’s line deliveries invariably include a trace of New York sass or snark, stopping just short of smugness. Charlie is never condescending; he grants respect to all who deserve it. (J.R.’s estranged father, who drops in just often enough to disappoint the boy further, is one of the exceptions.) 

 

Going in Style: A stylish romp

Going in Style (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for drug content, mild sensuality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.7.17

Remakes rarely live up to their predecessors.

This is one of the exceptions.

Once Jesus (John Ortiz, second from right) realizes that his three new "friends" — from
left, Willie (Morgan Freeman), Joe (Michael Caine) and Albert (Alan Arkin) — are serious
about their desire to rob a bank, he does his best to save them from rookie mistakes.

Director Zach Braff’s re-booted Going in Style charms from beginning to end, thanks to scripter Theodore Melfi’s savvy update of the 1979 original. That film seriously misled audiences with an advertising campaign that promised droll hijinks from its veteran cast — George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg — when, in fact, it was a serious downer that became progressively more depressing.

Braff and Melfi learned from that mistake. Their new Style makes ample comedic use of its fresh trio of veteran scene-stealers — Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin — while supplying some trenchant social commentary, which was absent the first time around.

It’s also obvious, in the wake of the Wells Fargo scandal and other recent examples of greedy, soulless financial skullduggery, that banks — and bank officers — are likely to spend the next several years competing alongside Nazis, as go-to movie villains. I can’t imagine a more fitting punishment.

Best friends Joe (Caine), Willie (Freeman) and Albert (Arkin) live across the street from each other in a fading Brooklyn neighborhood. Willie and Albert share one home, their combined pension and Social Security payments just enough to keep them in modest comfort. Joe has taken in his daughter and beloved granddaughter, Brooklyn (Joey King); his monthly pension check is barely enough to meet the mortgage.

Or it was, back when the checks still arrived. They’ve been absent of late, thanks to “restructuring” by the company that has absorbed Semtech Steel, where the three men spent their working careers.

The first body blow comes with a warning notice that the bank holding Joe’s mortgage is about to foreclose; the killing punch follows quickly, when a (very brave) Semtech flack gathers employees and retirees, and announces that the new corporate owners have moved all operations overseas. And that all pensions will be dissolved in order to help cover outstanding debt.

Adding insult to injury, this heartless financial rape will be overseen by the very bank holding Joe’s mortgage.