3 stars out of 5
I’m trying to support the open movie theaters. The only problem is, there are no damn movies! So a while back, when I read that Godzilla vs. Kong would be released on March 26, I thought to myself, “There’s something I’d enjoy doing on my second pandemic birthday weekend.” Except it wasn’t released on March 26. Thanks for ruining my birthday, Gojira!
I skimmed the dreck for something else to see. The best of the bunch, for my tastes anyway, appeared to be Nobody starring Bob Odenkirk. I like Bob Odenkirk, all the way back to Mr. Show. I’ve been less interested in him as a dramatic actor but, I like Bob Odenkirk. And the poster had his face looking all beat up, surrounded by punching fists, so that looked pretty funny. Metacritic clocked in at 63. Acceptable.
Now, I’m a big fan of the “ordinary schlub thrown into extraordinary circumstances” genre. Perhaps the greatest of all time is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, which I recently watched for a second time and found it to be just as excellent as I did when I was 18 — maybe more so. Nobody seems like it’s going to be that kind of movie, but then it isn’t. So that was a disappointment for me, and it took me a little longer to get into the groove (boy you’ve got to prove your love to meeeeeeeee). But when I did, I enjoyed the film.
Mind you, this is not a great movie. Was distracted from the get-go by the bad wig and Statham-stubble that Odenkirk is sporting. The writing is merely serviceable; Odenkirk makes the dialogue sound better than it is. Some characters, such as the brother-in-law, are too cartoonish and took me out of the story (which I won’t spoil for you). Odenkirk is solid but no other actors — including Christopher Lloyd and RZA — particularly stand out. The overall feeling is a bit too slick/phony.
But… it mostly works. If you like guns, knives, punching, and Russian mobsters, you will enjoy this. There’s a breathless, goofy momentum to the action, with enough genuine laughs tossed in. It gets over-the-top stupid toward the end but, you know, my expectations were pretty well shot by then anyway. Not everybody will love Nobody but somebody will.
Jack Silbert, curator