There’s a single joke in the Nobody films, one that the original film played earnestly enough for its middling action fare to pass muster: What if John Wick was played by Bob Odenkirk? It’s not that Keanu Reeves was ever a young, spry killer in those movies—the point is that he’s been dragged back into a life he left behind—but that Odenkirk, even in his most serious roles, has always seemed like a smarmy Midwestern pencil-pusher. So when he’s dragged back into a life he left behind, there’s an additional layer of levity in watching a dweeb who should be mowing the lawn in Crocs beat the asses of endless henchmen. But though the punches maintain their force in Nobody 2, the sole punchline they support has become a grating dad joke, one that you’ve heard so many times that it’s lost all meaning.
Odenkirk’s Hutch is no longer resisting the pull of his primal nature, now fully embracing the easy dopamine hits of hitting people very hard. The conflict between his feeble family-man exterior and murderous maniac interior has disappeared. The ground beneath the power trip fantasy has fallen away, leaving behind little but wrung-dry id. In fact, Hutch has so fully reverted to his former line of work—paying off some debt to a figure named The Barber; this was written by the John Wick guy, after all—that he’s now disappointing his family through his absence rather than his temperance. That means it’s time for reconnection, which means time for a family vacation to the only place Hutch ever got to go as a kid, hoping to make up for his fatherly failings with numbing nostalgia.
So Hutch, his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), their kids (Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath), and his once-killer father (played unintelligibly by Christopher Lloyd) head to the low-rent Midwest amusement park town Plummerville. Family trips, especially ones based in tradition, often take bittersweet pit stops. Grasping at the past, trying to experience the same magic that made them memorable in the first place—or to pass on that magic to the next generation—is an exercise in futility. But don’t ask Indonesian action/horror staple Timo Tjahjanto (The Shadow Strays, The Night Comes For Us) to find any of that depth in his English-language debut.
The director and his screenwriters (Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin) choose lizard-brained stupidity throughout—from the story to the needledrops—and the cursory gestures they make towards the bonds between family members or the introspections of its killers are worse than if they hadn’t tried at all. Even the idea Hutch must hope that his children will be better than him amounts to less than nothing; as soon as Hutch’s son starts joining in the fights, everyone is thrilled. And there’s no reluctance to engage in the film’s initial encounter, between the family and a group of town big-shots including the park owner (John Ortiz) and his corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks). The central, and only, conflict between keeping up appearances and giving in to the raging beast is gone; Nobody 2 is merely a change of setting, an excuse for Odenkirk to wreak havoc in Hawaiian shirts and socks with sandals.
This makes the shallow yet over-plotted rampage read like a 90-minute excuse, reverse-engineered to lead to an R-rated Home Alone battle of booby traps and bullets at a carnival. This setpiece, filled with brutality if not imagination (most of the attraction-specific ideas can be summed as “what if it exploded?”), will be enough to satisfy action junkies attracted by Tjahjanto’s name. Chunks of gore spatter the screen, fingers and legs separate from their bodies, teeth scatter like rice at a wedding. But without the gags or personality of its predecessor (or even its veneer of emotional conflict), the silly, nasty fights of Nobody 2 more blatantly become Wick Lite.
And since Nobody has always been a half-hearted “Wick with a day job” idea from franchise writer Kolstad, Hutch again runs into a shadowy syndicate, led by another over-the-top star (Sharon Stone) slumming it as a screwy crime lord. She’s got her own lore, her own definitive henchmen, and her own Joker-like performance—if she’d played the role a decade ago, there might’ve been some scenery left for her to chew. Her sweaty camp is at least preferable to the stiffness of Odenkirk and Nielsen, whose dynamic becomes so muddied that each actor simply grits their teeth through their scenes.
There’s a pathetic irony to Nobody 2 having a midlife crisis. Abandoning what little individuality its milquetoast once had to chase the formula of its more successful acquaintance only undermines the still-serviceable violence and unchallenged stars. It’s like a franchise-scale version of the phenomenon where a comic actor gets so committed to training for their superhero or action role that they forget why they were cast in the first place. This slapdash sequel doesn’t so much go on vacation, knowing that it will soon return to its routine, as it goes on a bender. It can make those synapses fire in the moment, but even that buzz is nagged by the notion that there won’t be much left in the aftermath.
Director: Timo Tjahjanto
Writer: Derek Kolstad, Aaron Rabin
Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, RZA, Michael Ironside, Colin Salmon, Billy MacLellan, Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath, Christopher Lloyd, Colin Hanks, John Ortiz, Sharon Stone
Release Date: August 15, 2025
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