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.

Brick Mansions: Thick as a...

Brick Mansions (2014) • View trailer 
One star. Rated PG-13, despite frenetic gunfire, relentless violence, profanity, drug content, sexual menace and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang

My 8-year-old nephew could have written a better script.

Pinned down by an overhead sniper, Lino (David Belle, left) and Damien (Paul Walker)
try to figure out their next move. It won't be hard; in a movie this daft, I'm sure they
could just sprout wings and fly up to confront their attacker.

I marvel at the fact that people — in this case, Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri — got paid actual money to generate such swill. This inept excuse for an action flick may not be as disgustingly mean-spirited as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent Sabotage, but it’s just as stupid.

Actually, Brick Mansions isn’t even a movie; it’s just a big-screen talent showcase for French parkour founder David Belle, a fast-moving force of nature best known as a stunt coordinator on films such as Transporter 2, Colombiana and The Family. Belle is the real star here, and — I cannot lie — his jaw-dropping free running, climbing, jumping, hopping and bopping are a sight to behold.

Poor Paul Walker — the late Paul Walker — may be top-billed, but he’s little more than a shadow in Belle’s wake.

And both of them are ill-served by this limp-noodle project from Besson, the French movie machine — he also co-produced this junker — who dashes off scripts, individually or collaboratively, like grocery lists. And, frankly, filming a grocery list might have given us a better plot.

Besson has delivered numerous enjoyable hits, from La Femme Nikita and The Transporter to Taken. But he’s also responsible for a lot of disappointing junk, including recent efforts such as Lockout and this year’s Kevin Costner vehicle, 3 Days to Kill.

Brick Mansions actually is an American remake of an earlier Besson/Naceri script, 2004’s District 13. Belle played the same character in that version — same name, even — which was set in the “futuristic” Paris ghettos of 2010, where an undercover cop and an ex-thug (Belle’s part) teamed up to infiltrate a criminal gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb.

Imagine. I managed to type that last sentence with a straight face.