DAN WEBSTER:
There’s more than one good reason for why the two-face mask that is used to symbolize the performing arts blends tragedy with comedy. For one, the ancient Greeks used each individually to ensure their audiences understood the emotions conveyed by the actors wearing them.
Today more than ever, though, they mean something else as well—namely, as a sign that there’s often a fine line between the two genres. And nowhere is that line more apparent than in the career of Bob Odenkirk.
Odenkirk’s most recent incarnation is as the star of two action films, 2021’s Nobody and, playing now in theaters, Nobody 2. In both, he plays Hutch Mansell, former assassin, now family man, whose past just won’t leave him alone. In the first film, this occurs most notably when he reverts to his violent nature and beats up Russian thugs who have been harassing a young woman.
In the second, Hutch merely wants to enjoy a family vacation, though the place he chooses to do so just happens to be the center of a criminal enterprise run by a psychopathic ringleader (played by Sharon Stone). Again, though reluctantly, Hutch gives in to his inner John Wick—so to speak—this time with a bit of aid from his family, especially that of his adopted brother Harry (played by the rapper RZA), his father David (played by Christopher Lloyd ) and his wife Becca (played by Connie Nielsen).
To be clear, long before he became an action star, Odenkirk pursued a career in comedy. He succeeded not just by crafting some of the great Saturday Night Live sketches—Chris Farley as a motivational speaker “living in a van down by the river” being just one—but also by writing for such shows as Late Night With Conan O’Brien, and at times writing for and performing with comedy greats such as Ben Stiller (on the Emmy Award-winning Ben Stiller Show) as well as Garry Shandling, David Cross and others.
That was one mask Odenkirk wore, the one marked by dancing eyes and a wide grin. He famously donned the dramatic, downcast version when he got cast as the sleazy attorney Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill first in the series Breaking Bad and then in its spinoff Better Call Saul.
Which set him up perfectly to play the character of Hutch, a man finding it hard to change, not just because being an ordinary worker bee is an emotionally draining existence but because when certain situations arise—mainly those that put his family in jeopardy—he can’t help but respond to them with what he knows best: an innate sense of ferocity.
At first, that doesn’t seem to be the case in Nobody 2—despite the fact that the events of the first film have forced him to resume his career as an assassin. But after one particularly rough assignment, and because his career demands are affecting both his marriage and his duties as a father, he decides to take a break.
And his solution is to head to Plummerville, an amusement park that he recalls spending time at as a boy with his father and brother. This, of course, turns out to be a bad decision for a number of reasons, most of them because Lendina (the character played by Stone) but also due to an arrogant deputy sheriff (played by Colin Hanks) and what essentially is an army of killers.
It's all pretty predictable, even given Hutch’s uneasy alliance with the town’s reluctant sheriff (played by John Ortiz). And much of what Indonesian-born director Timo Tjahjanto puts on the screen follows the format of what screenwriter Derek Kolstad—who wrote both films—envisioned.
Some of it is funny, even during the many scenes of graphic bloodletting. But that’s what we expect from Odenkirk, who has the ability to inhabit the intersection of comedy and drama as well as anyone.
The problem comes from Tjahjanto, who for the most part merely amps up the action that director Ilya Naishuller created for the first film, not to mention screenwriter Kolstad, whose script revisions don’t add anything particularly novel or interesting.
In Hollywood, sequels are often bigger and louder. But as is the case with Nobody 2, that doesn’t make them necessarily better.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.