“Nobody 2” - For better or for worse.

Prior to attending the screening for Nobody 2, I figured I should watch Nobody. Literally the night before the screening is when I watched it. That way, everything would be fresh in my mind going into the sequel. I’m really glad I did because it was a decent action flick, the sequel featured some characters and elements that would have made far less sense, and it highlighted things that were done better (and worse) in the sequel.

Obviously, I never reviewed Nobody so here’s a quickie. Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) is a retired CIA assassin trudging through each day of his ordinary, mundane, married-with-two-kids, marriage-on-the-rocks life. One night, his house gets robbed, so Hutch tracks down the burglars to recover his daughter’s missing kitty bracelet. On his way home he prevents some drunk Russians from raping a woman, beating the hell out of them on a bus. Next thing you know, there are scores of dead Russian mobsters, Hutch’s house burns to the ground, and hundreds of millions of Russian mob dollars get set on fire. When the dust settles, Hutch’s family and marriage issues are all better now. The end.

It shouldn’t surprise you in the least that a movie featuring next to zero plot, Russian mobsters, and an unkillable retired assassin murdering everyone was written by the same guy (Derek Kolstad) that penned the first three John Wick movies. And like John Wick, Nobody is entertaining in a brainless, violent action kind of way. But at least Nobody doesn’t include a set of completely ignored and pointless rules.

Now that we’ve established Kolstad is a human skipping record player, you can go into Nobody 2 assured that Kolstad has not evolved in the slightest. Nobody 2 is the classic sequel that repeats all of the beats from the first film but dressed in slightly different clothes. And I mean every single beat.

Mundane regular life? Check. Hutch’s angsty son Brady (Gage Munroe) is mad at Hutch? Check. Hutch’s marriage with wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) is on the rocks? Check. Hutch takes revenge on some guys for a slight against his daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath)? Check. Hutch’s revenge stumbles him into a Russian mafia operation? Check. Fight scene on a moving vehicle with Hutch fighting several dudes? Check. Psychotic Russian mob boss? Check. Hundreds of millions of dollars in torched Russian mob money? Check. Hutch’s dad David (Christopher Lloyd) and brother Harry (RZA) helping Hutch booby trap a location MacGyver-style for the climactic showdown with dozens of Russians and their boss? Check, check, and check.

To be fair, it’s not an exact clone. Hutch’s regular life now includes missions assigned by The Barber (Colin Salmon) to pay off the money he burned, which cause him to miss a bunch of family life stuff and piss off Becca and Brady. Hold on a second. The money didn’t belong to The Barber, so why is Hutch working it off? If Becca knows about Hutch’s new job and past, presumably including the debt, why is she getting upset at Hutch? Same question for Brady? Seems like Hutch not doing his job means they all die, so maybe they should be a little more grateful.

More importantly, why wasn’t this crap left on the cutting room floor? It doesn’t build the characters. In fact, it actively regresses Becca and Brady and turns the audience against them. The movie makes the family angst the motivation for Hutch to take the family on a vacation, but he was going to do that anyway since he told The Barber he needed a break for a little while. Needing a break from murder missions is a perfectly reasonable motivation for a family romp. None of that family angst matters later either. Erase it from the movie and the rest of the movie unfolds exactly the same way. This is a great example of the sequel doing something worse than the original.

Speaking of things worse than the original, Sharon Stone plays the sequel’s Russian mob boss, Lendina. If you’ve never heard the term “chewing the scenery,” it describes when an actor delivers an over-the-top, exaggerated performance. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Think of it as when a performance seems like the opposite of natural. The moment Stone appears in the film (roughly the midpoint), “chewing the scenery” is a vast understatement. Stone appears to be having a seizure through most of her performance and nothing about it can be described as good. It’s the kind of cringingly awful performance that will make you question if Stone forgot to take her meds before fleeing the retirement home.

On the flip side, the sequel did do some things better. First, the plot was much tighter. Everything that happens is tied together in the town Hutch takes the family to, rather than two completely disconnected events clumsily transitioning Hutch through the first movie. Second, the sequel is mostly shot during the day or in bright lights rather than at night or dark venues. Yes, filmmakers, audiences tend to better enjoy what they can actually see. Third, both the vehicle fight and climactic fight in the sequel are a bit more fun, mostly because they’re a bit more silly. Nobody is pretty grim and dire, but the sequel lightens the mood. It’s like if The Great Outdoors was invaded by John Wick. Family angst and everything.

Rating: Ask for thirteen dollars back because you’ve seen this movie several times with different titles, but still kind of enjoy it.