Movie Review - Nobody

Director: Ilya Naishuller
Genre: Action/ Crime
Runtime: 92 minutes
Year: 2021
Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Aleksey Serebryakov, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Ironside, Colin Salmon, RZA, Billy MacLellan, Ayara Mengesha, Gage Munroe, Aleksandr Pal, Humberly González, Edsson Morales, J.P. Manoux, Adrian McLean
 
Description: A docile family man (Bob Odenkirk) slowly reveals his true character after his house gets burgled by two petty thieves, which, coincidentally, leads him going to a bloody war with a Russian crime boss.

Review: Bob Odenkirk, mostly known for his role as Saul Goodman in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul”, is not you typical action star. Especially given the fact that Odenkirk is already in his late fifties and he hasn’t done anything action-packed like this before. And it can go wrong, making an actor do something completely different. In “Nobody” it really works and Odenkirk is utterly convincing as the jaded family man Hutch, whose life contains very little tension. But then one night his house is broken into and he sees an opportunity to overpower one of the burglars. But Hutch is smart enough to refrain from such unnecessary provocations. But no matter how well he managed to de-escalate the situation, the experience does something to him. He eventually goes after them, but ends up in a fight with a Russian crime boss.
“Nobody” does remind me of movies like “A History of Violence” or “John Wick”, and it clearly took some inspiration from them. But in the details, you can tell that the filmmakers have thought about the subject matter just a bit more than is usual for this kind of movie. Because it’s mostly an action film, for the most part very serious.
The strongest asset remains the casting of Bob Odenkirk. It seems like a movie for action stars like Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson, but with Odenkirk we actually have someone who actually looks like a normal civilian instead of a born action hero who has to act against his image in the first act. And when Hutch’s true nature is revealed, we see him taking at least as many punches as he gives out. The result is a character for whom it can be rightly feared that he will lose out. The lesson is not that Odenkirk should get every action role from now on, but that ore roles like this would enrich the action genre.
I really loved “Nobody”, and with a standard action star this movie would be a ‘nobody’ film. But by choosing someone like Odenkirk, this movie is given something that makes the film stand-out from others in the genre.

Rating: 4 / 5