Nobody 2 (2025) - Movie Review
Bob Odenkirk is back.
What if I told you the sequel to one of my surprise favorite movies of yesteryear fails to live up to the original?
Not a shock, right?
What if I told you that on its own, it’s still a really good movie?
Let’s discuss.
Nobody 2 is a 2025 action-comedy film brought to us by the iconic cult horror director Timo Tjahjanto and writers Aaron Rabin and Derek Kolstad. The combination of writers and the director is such an odd and confusing mix. Tjahjanto is an extreme horror director, responsible for one of the best modern interpretations of the extreme subgenre, 2014’s Killers. He is a horror director with great chops when it comes to ultra-violent fight scenes. Kolstad makes sense in his role as he is the writer of the original 2021 film. Why Rabin was involved is a headscratcher. Rabin’s only writing credit is for four episodes of Amazon’s well-rated, but rarely talked about, Jack Ryan series. You know, the slow, overly dramatic, and plodding version of Jack Ryan, which lacks all the charisma and dark humor of the Harrison Ford films? The script is uneven in tone and, unfortunately, falls flat due to the scene-to-scene tonal shifts.
The film focuses on the eponymous Nobody, Hutch Mansell, as he tries to balance his life as a professional assasin and his life with his family. It’s not going well. Hutch has been working overtime, attempting to clear the debt he created in the first film. These long missions lead to a new rift in the house as his children feel neglected, as does his wife. So, when summer vacation comes around, Hutch schedules a family trip to the theme park he attended as a child. What initially looks like a cringey vacation turns out to be a lot of fun, until the family crosses paths with the crooked lawmen policing the boardwalk, uncovering the seedy unbelly the park is meant to hide. Will Hutch and his family find a way to salvage their family vacation, or will they be the next bodies found floating in the lazy river? Find out in tonight’s feature, Nobody 2.
This movie is uneven in tone and pace, which makes the 90-minute run time drag.
As mentioned before, the clashing styles of the writers involved in this film sank the ship before the film’s opening scene. It was like the filmmakers weren’t satisfied with the first film’s comedic bent and felt the need to make the story darker, but at the same time tried to use the humor in random bursts. It falls into the pitfalls of modern audience writing, depicting Hutch as a loser in a different way than the first movie. He’s toxically masculine, and this is affecting his son at the beginning of the film. Hutch is made to look like a total loser, even after the triumph in the first film. It feels lazy.
It’s Incredibles II all over again.
The first film concludes on a happy note, and the family is united, but much like Incredibles 2 and the Umbrella Academy season 2, they break up the family and rehash the entire story of the first film, but through a more feminist lens. The problem is, the character’s motivations are threadbare at best, and nonsensical at worst.
The film can’t decide if it’s a treatise on the failures of a father and the trauma from his childhood being superimposed on his family, or if it wants to be a brainless action comedy that moves from set piece to set piece.
It’s a very uneven experience.
The entire film rests on the idea that Hutch owes a debt for burning the money in the first film. This is something never mentioned in the first movie and is vaguely implied in a poorly staged exposition dump at the beginning of this film. It’s a flimsy retcon that almost ruins the film from the start. It’s obvious that there was a deeper, meaningful story that at least one of the writers wanted to tell about generational trauma, but it just doesn’t mesh with what we saw in the first film, nor is the story good enough to convey anything other than Hollywood’s desperate attempt to get people into theater seats.
This movie has exciting action and brutal fight scenes, but it feels like it has no stakes.
It’s so weird to feel so dejected by a film featuring so many actors that I love. Bob Odenkirk, Christopher Lloyd, Connie Nielsen, and the RZA are all great with what they’re given. I feel like Nielsen got the raw end of the stick with her character as she’s essentially there to be a wet blanket for almost the entire runtime (just like in the previous film), and then in the final 10 Minutes, she’s the badass heroine that saves the men.
It’s bizarre and uneven, and really doesn’t click. Her being the savior is fine, but the flat writing of her character for most of the runtime doesn’t match the climax of the film. You can clearly see the line in the sand that the writers drew between their two philosophies, and the movie suffers for it.
The film feels more like a reboot or television pilot spinoff than a sequel to the original.
It’s still a fun, brainless popcorn movie to watch with a group.
Just don’t expect anything near the streamlined action comedy of the previous film.
Nobody 2 is available for rent on all Digital Platforms.
