Ilya Naishuller
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Connections, in both directions
One such picture, “Lady in the Lake,” a 1947 detective picture (adapted from a Raymond Chandler novel) directed by and starring a largely unseen (save for mirror shots) Robert Montgomery, gets a nod of recognition in the much more frenetic and fantastical “ Hardcore Henry .”
(Blink and you’ll miss a reference to that film, 1947’s Lady in the Lake.)
There's even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it nod to the gimmick's history in a poster, spotted on a bystander's wall, for Robert Montgomery's groundbreaking 1947 camera-as-protagonist noir "Lady in the Lake."
That cycle accompanied one of Hollywood’s most famous first-person flops, Robert Montgomery’s 1947 Philip Marlowe mystery Lady in the Lake, and it will almost certainly repeat itself with Hardcore Henry, a frenetic yet joyless Russian action film that takes its inspiration from videogames rather than Raymond Chandler novels.
One scene even references Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake, which used the first-person perspective technique all the way back in 1947.
Back in 1947, actor Robert Montgomery directed an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake, and in essaying the role of detective Philip Marlowe, he had the whole picture shot through his character's POV.
There is something unseemly and disturbing about how Kolstad and Naishuller try to have it both ways, propping up Hutch as both a figure of repressed middle-class rage in the manner of Michael Douglas in 1993’s Falling Down, and also a trained operative whose skills are reawakened when his family is put in peril, à la Liam Neeson in the Taken films.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nobody blends Wick isms with the protective-father fodder of Taken and the I’M-NOT-IMPOTENT insistence of male-rage sagas like Falling Down and Death Wish .
Odenkirk really goes to town in this one, raking up a body count that probably doubles that of all three Taken movies combined.
In fact, he’s quite extraordinary, not unlike the basic gimmick in “Taken,” in which a seemingly average character secrets a strikingly formidable set of skills.
There have been many movies and TV shows with similar themes like this, including the “Death Wish” series and the “Kung Fu” and “Equalizer” TV series and recent “Taken,” “John Wick” and “Equalizer” movies.
A natural vehicle for director Ilya Naishuller — following his 2016 Russian GoPro-shot sci-fi action flick “Hardcore Henry” — “Nobody” gathers from the familiar blood-soaked stream of “John Wick,” “Death Wish” and the “Taken” franchise to fashion a savage ode featuring the same mettle of its inspirations but with far greater humor attached to the well-worn beats.
It is most evident in the climax, which is highly inspired by the ending of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971).
Both directors have similar tastes in kicks, bullets and punches and they respect these main attractions; similar to Sam Peckinpah’s love for carnage in films like Straw Dogs .
Article content Going into Nobody , I’d thought it was one of those films where a non-violent dude has an extreme change of heart – picture Charles Bronson in Death Wish , Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs , Choi Min-sik in Oldboy , or any of their various remakes.
Sam Peckinpah took it to its extreme with his 1971 movie “Straw Dogs,” wherein Dustin Hoffman’s meek mathematician can’t stop roughnecks from raping his wife, yet ultimately learns to take a stand.
But its 90 minutes fly by, and it’s a canny vehicle for Odenkirk, the unlikeliest star of a righteous macho bloodbath since Dustin Hoffman got his bear trap on in “Straw Dogs.”
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nobody blends Wick isms with the protective-father fodder of Taken and the I’M-NOT-IMPOTENT insistence of male-rage sagas like Falling Down and Death Wish .
Directed by Ilya Naishuller and written by Derek Kolstad, “Nobody” actually taps into a similar mentality that Michael Douglas’ protagonist character had in the 1993 crime thriller “Falling Down.”
What’s revealed is: Hutch hasn’t so much gone berserk (this isn’t as layered as “Falling Down,” for example, a movie it vaguely resembles at first), as a long-dormant piece of him has finally snapped out of its fog.
Except this isn’t Falling Down , and there is much more to Hutch than anyone could imagine.
What begins as a riff on "Falling Down" — an average man is fed up and blows his top — becomes something more, and something more fun, as Hutch is revealed to be a long-dormant government asset, code name Nobody.
At that point, and after being emasculated by a cop who arrives on the scene, the next-door neighbor, and Brady, it appears Hutch might end up going down the "Falling Down" path and be the average guy who's finally had enough, snaps, and doles out some long pent-up justice.
The rough-and-tumble cyborg mayhem recalls John Hyams’ Universal Soldier pictures, the final fight of hundreds of indistinguishable robot cronies is inevitably similar to a recent Paul W.S. Anderson film, and — even if not capturing their pure energy — there’s song-and-dance number featuring multiple robot clones that can’t help but make one think of a similar sequence from Neveldine/Taylor’s excellent 2009 feature Gamer .
Writer-director Ilya Naishuller is clearly most inspired by “Crank” crazies Neveldine/Taylor, so much that he even airlifts an entire musical sequence from their film “Gamer,” including the same song.
Naishuller, who developed his camera-as-mask rig while shooting music videos for his Russian alt-rock act Biting Elbows, has advanced and perfected the work of pioneers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, whose 2009 feature Gamer starred Gerard Butler as a man whose body is controlled by a guy playing a video game.
“Hardcore Henry” is a jolt to the system and a post-modern pastiche of influences from video games (“Better Off Dead,” “Doom”) and action movies (“Gamer,” “The Raid”) that is sure to prove seminal in its own right for the way it makes its audience a plaything.
One would expect a fight reminiscent of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker from Rush Hour, but the inclusion of the realistic effects of the complex punches and kicks makes it an interesting sequence.
Writer-director Ilya Naishuller is clearly most inspired by “Crank” crazies Neveldine/Taylor, so much that he even airlifts an entire musical sequence from their film “Gamer,” including the same song.
It’s like Jason Statham’s Crank on speed... if that’s possible.
Cranked up to Crank levels of cartoonish ultra-violence, but lacking Jason Statham’s charismatic presence, the movie literally screams in your face for an hour-and-a-half, insisting that you’re having a good time.
It worked much better in “Crank,” for instance, another movie with mayhem, gore and humor hurling breathlessly by us as a hero races against his impending death.
Over-the-top-ness is what draws you into "Hardcore Henry," a film that can be described as a cross between the "Call of Duty" first-person shooter video games, and hyper-violent, semi-satirical action movies like "RoboCop" and "Crank."
At first baldly aping “The Bourne Identity” and then “Crank,” the movie sees a mute Henry wake up in an airship with no self-knowledge but a penchant for combat and a need to intermittently recharge his heart via battery.
Article content Going into Nobody , I’d thought it was one of those films where a non-violent dude has an extreme change of heart – picture Charles Bronson in Death Wish , Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs , Choi Min-sik in Oldboy , or any of their various remakes.
Nobody is an everyman’s revenge saga, the likes of which can be traced back to Charles Bronson’s Death Wish franchise of the 1970s and 80s, Liam Neeson’s Taken films and, of course, Keanu Reeves’ increasingly popular John Wick movies.
In philosophy, however, we’re stuck in Death Wish territory.
For every dumb action sequence -- the end of the film, with Hutch's well-placed, home-made booby traps firing off at the mobsters left and right plays like a vastly more bloody version of "Home Alone" -- there's at least a few moments of more genuine inspiration (RZA dispatches a pair of mobsters by shooting one with a shotgun over his shoulder, and letting the recoil pop the other in the face), but there's nothing much more to see here, other than the empty calories of cartoonish violence.
Written by John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad, Nobody shares a similar mixture of snappy dialogue, wry humor and heightened, nigh-cartoonish levels of violence and mayhem: the imaginative carnage of the film’s third act, which feels like an R-rated riff on Home Alone , is jaw-droppingly bonkers.
And if that wasn’t enough, we get a kind of R-rated Home Alone finale, with Hutch rigging up a warehouse with deadly booby traps.
Grander set pieces such as Hutch’s machine factory rigged like John Rambo’s Home Alone bring the defensive punishment through varied death sequences delivered by workshop weapon inventions.
Think of it as “Baby Driver” meets “John Wick” and “Home Alone.”
By the time the novelty of the first-person perspective wears out – recalling that John Carpenter did the same thing nearly 40 years ago in the opening sequence of “Halloween” expedites the process – the chase movie template begins to weigh heavily.
That introductory sequence (prefaced by a dreamy flashback involving Tim Roth that isn’t explained until much later) recalls the visor initiation sequence of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 Robocop, a similar tale of a dead man being reborn as a memory-plagued machine.
The idea comes from video games and, before them, horror’s occasional camera-eye sequence, famously extended by Brian De Palma in movies like Blow Out and his delirious Phantom of the Paradise.
“Guns Akimbo” is the movie I think “Hardcore Henry” wanted to be a few years back, except that aggressive and hyper-caffeinated adventure didn’t have the luxury of Daniel Radcliffe having guns sewn to his hands.
It’s more Hardcore Henry than Robocop .
While its neon-lit cityscapes and constant scuffling are reminiscent of the John Wick series, Howden’s offering is more in spirit of Ilya Naishuller’s Hardcore Henry (2015).
But a small cult audience (say, viewers who liked things like Crank , Crank: High Voltage , and Hardcore Henry ) may find Guns Akimbo similarly entertaining.
"Nobody" more closely resembles David Cronenberg's 2005 groundbreaker "A History of Violence," in which Viggo Mortensen made us complicit in justifying his character's brutal past.
Ilya Naishuller's ultra-violent addition to the burgeoning genre of unleashed male id flicks is like a combo of "Breaking Bad," "A History of Violence" and "John Wick," the latter all the more so because of a shared screenwriter (Derek Kolstad).
After that radio conversation, the movie abruptly drops its exploration of cowardice and masculinity and focuses on the action, ultimately putting it slightly below similar movies like Martin Scorsese’s 1991 “Cape Fear” or David Cronenberg’s 2005 “A History of Violence.”
Kostad steals broadly from both David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," and Chad Stahelski's "John Wick" chronicles, to arrive at his everyman assassin.
Movies about people with talents they hide or have hidden from them — think “A History of Violence” or the “Bourne” films — have a built-in interest factor.
David Cronenberg gave us the definitive man-killing-machine statement with 2005’s “A History of Violence,” a nastily rendered masterwork that didn’t just work as an action movie, but as a scathing treatise on the violent DNA that lingers inside all of us.
Moreover, the first-person device, which isn’t even new — way back in 1947, the Humphrey Bogart movie “Dark Passage” tried it; it didn’t catch on — is ineffective.
This trick has been tried before, notably in noir films such as Dark Passage and Lady in the Lake (both 1947) and sections of Strange Days (1995).
It worked for Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry .
That’s the hard, not-altogether surprising truth at the heart of Nobody , an old-style vigilante romp in the style of Dirty Harry , Death Wish and Taken , only with dashes of black humour and constant winks at the audience to come to the party and enjoy the mayhem when the bad guys get what they deserve.
But in the early-to-mid-’70s, when the revenge film as we know it was coming into being with “Dirty Harry,” “Walking Tall,” and “Death Wish,” part of the premise of the new pulp righteousness was that a man who seethed softly and carried a big weapon to cleanse the streets of “scum” had the kind of invincibility we now associate with demigods in spandex.
John Wick (2014) and its “gun-fu” became descriptors for action films showcasing highly choreographed and kinetic combinations of gunplay and martial arts.
Nobody is a solid action movie with excellent fight scenes and brutal takedowns that will be compared to John Wick but lacks the fantastic world-building the Wick movies that makes a good movie great.
It’s an explosive display that’s instantly reminiscent of “John Wick”, but substitute a murdered pet with a missing kid’s item of plastic jewelry.
Choreographed by the team behind “John Wick,” it’s the type of action scene that people will be mentioning with a smile for a long time, and a reminder of the adrenalin that a film can get from a creatively crafted action scene.
Many who have seen the film compare the action to the scenes found in the three John Wick movies.
Obviously inspired by the success of the “John Wick” movies, “Nobody” is a wild ride that goes a bit too far but is bolstered by terrific stunt work.
The idea comes from video games and, before them, horror’s occasional camera-eye sequence, famously extended by Brian De Palma in movies like Blow Out and his delirious Phantom of the Paradise.
Sadly, one of the big ones involves a Russian mobster, Yulian, played by Aleksey Serebryakov (so fine in Leviathan yet here overacting to the nth degree).
As Hutch is pulled back into a world of fists, bullets, and blood after accidentally crossing Russian mobster Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksey Serebryakov, Leviathan ) — himself an insidiously unpredictable character and a fine foil for our hero — Naishuller keeps the pace cooking with inventive showdowns and gallows humor, all filmed like he’s got one shot to prove his worth.
One of the victims is the young brother of an evil Russian crime lord named Yulian (Aleksey Serebryakov, Leviathan ), who loves Karaoke nights and sharkskin suits.
The fun really begins when Hutch accidentally runs afoul of a vengeful Russian gangster (Aleksey Serebryakov, "Leviathan"), but you may well ask yourself, "Who's the real sociopath here?"
The rumble catches the attention of excitable yet menacing drug lord, Yulian Kuznetsov (an energetic Aleksei Serebryakov, best known for his wonderful work in the acclaimed film Leviathan , 2014), who vows vengeance on Hutch.
We get Michael Ironside glowering as the aforementioned father-in-law, RZA literally phoning in some cool as Hutch’s contact to the old ways, and Leviathan star Aleksey Serebryakov having a flamboyant good time as the Russian heavy with a yen for karaoke.
Die Hard (1988) kicked off a spate of “ Die Hard in a blank” movies featuring average heroes against insurmountable odds.
Only time will determine if Ilya Naishuller's middle-aged, white male rage fantasy "Nobody" does for Bob Odenkirk what "Die Hard" did for a pudgy, light comic TV actor named Bruce Willis.
Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) gives a “Die Hard”-like performance as Hutch Mansell, a beaten-down dad and husband who can’t even get Trash Day right.