‘Nobody’ — Insulting Clichés Saved by Bullets and Punches
Bob Odenkirk isn’t just a savvy, dirty lawyer anymore — but he isn’t quite the action hero either.
A functioning brain, a pair of hands, and Final Draft software — these are the tools you need to write a basic screenplay. Derek Kolstad, the man responsible for Nobody’s script, definitely has them without a doubt. I, and maybe you too, also have those, but we haven’t got the right connections in Hollywood to sell a screenplay.
What I’m trying to say is that the plot of Nobody is as dumb as it gets in mainstream cinema.
But Kolstad also wrote John Wick - which grants him a pass, I guess - and made a career out of putting clichés in the right order. He's created aging action heroes to be played by superstars like Keanu Reeves and, well… Keanu Reeves. Side note: I never understood why that movie blew up the way it did, being decent and not much else, but then again, Michael Bay got to make five (5!!!) Transformers films, so what do I know.
One thing I will say in his defense is that movies like JW and Nobody help to keep the old-fashioned, non-superhero action flick genre alive. And we ought to respect that - at least a little.
That said, Nobody isn’t a great film but offers some well-designed action sequences to forget about its lack of imagination.
Within the first ten minutes of the movie, we see a mundane week of the protagonist, Hutch Mansell’s (Bob Odenkirk) life. It’s the kind of fast-cut montage we watched about two hundred times before: morning routine, commuting, work, commuting, home, family dinner. Repeat.
We are forced to see this like five times from back to back because we're assumed to be brain-damaged, Youtube-watching, social media-scrolling dummies, who have never seen a Tarantino movie before. So Nobody is just making sure we get the concept: Hutch is freaking depressed and bored to death with his painfully ordinary life. It feels insulting but whatever. We get over it to see some action.
One night, Hutch finds himself facing two burglars in his home. He cooperates and does nothing to stop them. His son bravely tackles one of the intruders, but Hutch tells him to let them go — better to be safe than sorry. The movie makes him seem like an exhausted, bitter, weak chickenshit. His masculinity is supposed to be in question. But guess what? It turns out that he is a trained assassin, previously employed by intelligence agencies to kill people who were considered untouchable or hard to arrest. A TWIST. Are you surprised? There’s even more!
He tracks down the burglar couple by using his dad’s old FBI badge and finds out that they only robbed him to pay for their sick baby’s medical treatment. Twist 2.0. Hutch leaves and gets on public transport. A few minutes later, a gang of thugs stops the bus - after they crash their own car (as you do) - and start harassing the passengers. It’s game time: Hutch takes out his frustration on them and beats the crap out of these blatantly stereotypical gangsters.
But listen to this: one of his victims is the brother of Yulian Kuznetsov, a vile mob boss in the RUSSIAN MAFIA! Twist 3.0. So now, Hutch has a problem, and we have an action film to finish — what a beautiful coincidence.
Look, I don’t mind cheap and dumb plots in B action flicks — I grew up watching Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal movies, for Christ's sake — as long as they know their place. But don’t insult me with playing out clichés like they’re supposed to have some sort of shock value or meaning. Despite its intentions, Nobody feels condescending and portentous far more often than it actually feels campy and self-aware.
If we take a look at what Kolstad wrote before John Wick, it makes sense, though: he penned two B film scripts starring acting-antidotes Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin. John Wick and Nobody is definitely an improvement - they both have bigger names, a decent budget, and better directors. Naturally, those are the key if you plan to make bad scripts entertaining.
Essentially, Nobody is saved by its director and cast. Not surprisingly, Christopher "Freaking" Lloyd basically steals every inch of the screen when he's on it. While Michael Ironside and RZA's guest-starring is a nice touch and fine addition to the whole. As far as Odenkirk goes, he's not action-hero material. Playing morally corrupt douchebags is more of his thing as we know, but he's a skilled enough actor to make this work.
However, my bet for making Nobody seem and sound cooler than it actually is goes for director Ilya Naishuller. He’s the reason why the hand-to-hand combat scenes and the gunfights make your adrenaline boil. Thanks to him, they come off as well-designed choreographies carried out in a brutal, fast-paced, rhythmic manner. He can skillfully depict middle-aged men killing and blowing up each other in several different ways.
Overall, I’m not as awfully pissed off about Nobody as I sound, but the more I think of its pretentious dialogues and plot points, the more I want to forget that I ever saw it. It’s just not as much of a guilty pleasure as critics and diehard fans make it out to be.
So, if you have a Final Draft software, a pair of hands, a functioning brain, and some creativity, please write an action movie script. Who knows, if you’re lucky, you might even get Ethan Hawke to play the lead. Doesn’t that sound already better than Nobody? It sure does to me.
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