Nobody

Movie Name: Nobody
Year of Release: 2021
Director: Ilya Naishuller
Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Aleksey Serebryakov, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Ironside, Colin Salmon, RZA, Billy MacLellan, Araya Mengesha, Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath
Genre: Action, Crime
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 5
Watch it on Amazon

Synopsis and Review:

Director Ilya Naishuller who made a name for himself as a commercials and music videos director, had a less than auspicious feature directorial debut with "Hardcore Henry", but "Nobody" is his chance to team with writer Derek Kolstad, who has written the "John Wick" series, alongside some episodes of the Marvel series, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier". "Nobody" follows the story of Hutch Mansell, a seemingly average middle aged men, father of a lovely family, who goes about his daily routine, working out but for the most part, keeping a low profile about everything. When his house is burglarized, he has an opportunity to deter the assailants, but chooses to do nothing and let them go. That is until he realizes those assailants took something that belonged to his daughter. As it turns out, Hutch is much more than he had led on, including to his family. Most of his professional career was spent connected to intelligence agencies, in a role he calls "auditor", but in reality an actual assassin, someone who basically wipes out problems no one wants to deal with. After stopping a bunch of hoodlums from attacking people on a bus, Hutch puts one of those individuals in the hospital, however one of those people is the brother of a Russian mobster, now intent on getting his revenge. However, the more information comes out on Hutch, or whatever they can find out, the scarier the situation seems, since it seems Hutch's skills and lethal approach to problem solving are unstoppable.

"Nobody" bares many similarities to the economical tone and narrative from "John Wick", with the biggest difference being of course, the fact that Wick walks alone, has no family ties, and adhered to a certain extent with the code established by the criminal underground. Hutch shares the same lethal traits as Wick, but operates within the mantle of protection from the "good guys", which allows him to do some really rough things, without having to consider much about consequences. It's a film that once more, reads like a straightforward B-movie, with little character development, and a narrative mostly focused on the action set pieces that comprise the bulk of the film. While Hutch is given some dimension, most of the supporting characters are mostly archetypes without many differentiating aspects, save for the personality and talent the actors bring to them. What has been the saving grace for the John Wick series, besides Keanu Reeves presence, is the fact that the films while hyper violent and deftly staged, are also peppered with humor and ultimately don't take themselves too seriously. "Nobody" borrows some of these elements, but not enough, since while attempting to humanize some of the supporting characters, fails to give them much to do, while the action set pieces are not quite as strong as the ones Chad Stahelski and his creative team stage for John Wick. Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Christopher Lloyd, RZA, all create solid characters, while the cinematography from Pawel Pogorzelski is somewhat generic. It's watchable, though not very memorable.