One thing I admired about Nobody is how quickly the movie announced itself. For better or worse, you know what you are in for after the opening two minutes of this film. And, paradoxically, that opening (or the decision to start your movie from the ending) informed me that I might not have the time of my life with this film. And I wanted to like it so bad!
Nobody couldn’t be more John Wick if it tried. The only way this film could get more like John Wick (and I half-expected for this to happen, by the way) is for Keanu Reeves to show up unexpectedly, and say “Woah. There truly is Nobody like you.” and then disappear. No explanation is needed. Because whether you like it or not, this is what Nobody is underneath it all – a movie that sacrificed everything for the sake of being “cool”.
Let’s start with the things I enjoyed – the casting is excellent. Bob Odenkirk pulls this role off and is the main reason this movie wasn’t more laughable in my eyes. Although even an actor of his calibre couldn’t pull off the “Give me the goddamn kitty cat bracelet, motherfucker!” line and make it sound cool. He tried, I will give him that, but he didn’t manage. But it wasn’t his fault as this is just one of many examples of how this is just a “copy of a copy” kind of film. “-The films we are copying all had a line like this, so we need to have our own! Quickly, what could set him off? -I don’t know, boss, what about a kitty cat bracelet? -Brilliant, that’s why we are paying you the big bucks!” And as much as I would like to write “I’ve enjoyed seeing Connie Nielsen in this film” I can’t, because sure, I did see her in this film, but the people behind this film wasted her character. This movie didn’t give her anything meaningful to do; one can’t help but wonder why they didn’t copy the “our protagonist has a dead wife” from John Wick too? It wouldn’t make this film any better, nevertheless, it might at least “kind of” excuse the movie for wasting Connie Nielsen.
Whom I absolutely loved seeing was Christopher Lloyd. I just wished they would have given us more scenes with his character kicking ass. Yes, this is a film where Saul Goodman kick-ass alongside Doc Brown, and I couldn’t enjoy it, even though I’ve tried. And don’t even get me started on RZA; who is here for five minutes…? Why do modern movies do this? Why hire some great actors or entertainers and give them not even five minutes of screen time?
My biggest issue with this film is simple. It really is John Wick if he were older. And also, if the stakes were much lower and the world-building wasn’t as intriguing, and the way our main character “gets pulled back in” was absolutely random. Because here’s the thing – the movie starts with one route (he is going after the people who broke into his home). And even if that were predictable, I would still like this more than what the movie evolved into after. Where our hero takes a random bus (presumably home), and because some random Russians crash into the bus and then board the bus, and then LOUDLY threaten to rape the only girl on the bus. Only then our hero randomly stumbles into the main “big bad” (by proxy, of course, because naturally, the big bad is the brother of one of our rapey random Russians, or RRR, how I like to call them), only then the rest of the movie can happen.
See, if you are going to rip off pretty much everything from John Wick (evil Russians, secret society, hero with a past where everybody is afraid of him once they realise who he is), why not copy the intention of John Wick? He wasn’t out looking for a fight/problems and randomly stumbled upon RRR; there was a reason he was after them. That was my main issue with Nobody; I didn’t buy the randomness of this premise and therefore couldn’t enjoy anything that came after. And look, I understand I am on an island here, as it’s highly rated across the board (7.4/10 on IMDb, 3.5/5 on Letterboxd), so I realise I am in a clear minority here. I honestly wonder how many people rated this film so highly because of the charismatic cast (mainly Bob and Christopher together). Because let me try this experiment – let’s remove Bob Odenkirk from this film. Everything else stays the same. The same script, action sequences, everything else remains. Put there some random, run of a mill actor. Do you still like the movie as a whole, or does it start to show its cracks?
I generally dislike this type of mental exercise as removing the best part of any movie will always hurt any film, no questions about that. But it does speak to something “deeper”, and it is a simple question, whether the movie works without that person. I can imagine (although this might be sacrilegious to say) that John Wick, for example, has somebody else than Keanu. It doesn’t matter who, because the point is, the film still works as they have developed the secret society of assassins well. The stakes would remain the same. Sure, the movie might not be as successful as with Keanu, but the quality (unless you’d hire somebody who couldn’t act) would remain the same. Whereas Nobody, had you removed Bob Odenkirk, would become a laughing stock of a movie as now I believe, it’s “shielded” from any criticism by the massive fan support for Bob. And he deserves it as he is simply a brilliant actor and seems like a decent guy in real life. It’s almost like there was a meeting, and people collectively decided: “Look, the movie clearly has issues, and it’s just a John Wick rip-off, but we STAN because Bob, ok? All clear?” And I didn’t get the invite to that meeting.
Overall, Nobody is a baffling movie to me. It sacrifices logic and story to being/looking cool every chance it gets (how many slow-mo scenes while old-timey songs play in the background can you have in one movie? The answer apparently is, all of them!) and hides its flaws behind the massive walking charisma called Bob Odenkirk. And the fact his dad is Doc Brown, and they both shoot Russians together at the end also helps. See, that is a sentence I thought I would never write in my life, and yet, here we are. I wish I could enjoy this film as much as others seem to around me. But again, I am clearly on an island here, so I would actually recommend checking out Nobody because who knows? You might like it more than me, and if so, I am happy for you.
That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!
Until next time,
Luke