Movie Review: Nobody (2021) (With Spoilers)

“Nobody” (2021) is an American action movie where we see what happens when a wussy American dad turns out to be a bad-ass.

Nobody (2021) Movie Art

(SPOILERS BELOW)

We start the movie with the repetitive nature of typical suburban life. Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is stuck in a rut with his job, his family, his wife, pretty much his whole life. One night he wakes up to hear intruders in the house. He appears paralyzed by them being there and tells him to just take what they want. As they are leaving his son jumps one of them. Hutch has a golf club in his hand and is prepared to hit the second attacker but decides not to. The robbers run away. His son and wife look disgusted at him. The police officers who come to the scene basically call him a wuss. He spends the next day stewing over the whole thing and not doing a thing about it.

The next night he comes home to the family in a funk along with him. His daughter says her special bracelet is missing. It was in the bowl that the robbers emptied. This activates something in Hutch which causes him to go on a mission to find the robbers and get the bracelet. That precipitating event causes him to get into a tangle with the Russian mob after he decides to beat up a bunch of them on the bus ride back from the robber’s house. The whole movie from the bracelet scene on is just an exponentially increasing action and gore fest with slashed faces, broken joints, explosions, and a high body count.

Are you thinking Falling Down with a bit of a Vin Diesel treatment? I was but don’t. This is more like an adult action version of The Incredibles . Hutch isn’t some flunky wuss suburban dad. He is a former super special agent known as an “auditor” who went around the world assassinating people. We got a hint that something was up when he tried to find out who gave one of the robbers a distinctive tattoo. He “borrowed” his dad’s ancient looking FBI badge which one of the store patrons called out. As they start getting around him a tattoo shows up on his inner left wrist that cold the oldest of the bad-asses to go hide in a closet. The rest of his background unfolds in a timely way as the story plays out. At least they did that so that in his universe his new found Chuck Norris ability made some sense. At least it makes as much sense as it is going to.

The whole movie had an 80s action movie wind up to it. I used to joke about Bollywood action movies feeling like 80s action movies in terms of its over the top action/ability scenes. This is all that but with better special effects since it is forty years later. Yeah, I was rolling my eyes at the stupidity of it all but it was kind of done in a half self-mocking way. Besides I got the bonus of seeing Christopher Lloyd in a movie again as an aging but still quite bad ass dad to Hutch’s character. It was sort of a family business thing, you see.

Overall the movie was enjoyable but my eyes hurt a bit from some of the over the top action scenes. You know the thing. The bad guys have all the aim of storm troopers in Star Wars and the good guys hit each shot they aim for, or even don’t aim for, and almost never run out of ammunition. Enjoyable but not great. Would I see a sequel if I didn’t have to? Probably not. I’m rating it 6/10.