Nobody (2021)
Directed by Ilya Naishuller
Hutch Mansell, a suburban dad, overlooked husband, nothing neighbor — a "nobody." When two thieves break into his home one night, Hutch's unknown long-simmering rage is ignited and propels him on a brutal path that will uncover dark secrets he fought to leave behind.
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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.
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.
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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.”
"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.
The combination of Ilya Naishuller, the Russian director of the gimmicky R-rated action exercise “Hardcore Henry,” with Bob Odenkirk, a comedian now better known for his dramatic work, is an intriguing mash-up.
Written (or copy-pasted) by John Wick’s Derek Kolstad, and directed by Hardcore Henry ’s Ilya Naishuller, Nobody is as under-distinguished as its name.
Naishuller, who made the 2015 video-game inspired shoot-’em-up Hardcore Henry , stages one dexterous fight scene after another, pulling the physics of his movie just up to the line of cartoonishness.
Kolstad and “Hardcore Henry” director Ilya Naishuller don’t bother to hide the borrowings from “John Wick.”
Naishuller's previous film Hardcore Henry (2015) was an all out bonkers send-up of action tropes and Nobody feels like a similar concept but more subtle.
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 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.
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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.
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.