Vengeance. Hyper-violent action. Tongue-in-cheek humour. The unexpected. And a ripping soundtrack.
That is what awaits those that venture into the cinema to see what is undoubtedly one of this year’s biggest surprise packets.
“Nobody” sure becomes somebody – somebody to be well and truly reckoned with.
Bob Odenkirk is Hutch Mansell, a seemingly mild-mannered husband and father of two – an older, teenage boy and a girl – whose life is drab and routine. Nothing whatsoever to see here.
In fact, it is positively boring to watch in the early scenes, as is director Ilya Naishuller’s want.
And then, out of the blue, while Hutch is downstairs at home late one night he spots two hooded intruders – a man and a woman, one with a gun – intent on robbery.
Suddenly, the tables are turned. Hutch’s son Blake (Gage Munroe) even tackles the male assailant to the ground and has him under his control. But Hutch has a change of heart and tells Blake to back off, allowing the crooks to get away.
That action (or inaction) by Hutch becomes the talk of the town and Hutch himself is clearly embarrassed by it.
But there is much more here than meets the eye.
It turns out that Hutch used to be an “auditor” for the FBI and gave up the job to settle in to family life, such that it is.
But the word “auditor” is a pseudonym for something far more nefarious.
He was, in fact, the clean-up guy – the bloke to whom they turned when everything else had gone pear shaped.
Let’s put it this way, he could be one mean mother that took no prisoners.
It is a side of him his kid couldn’t possibly envisage.
And yet that fuse has been lit again with the intrusion on his “domestic bliss”.
Just how fired up Hutch can get is shown when he tackles five young punks on a bus.
And things ramp up several notches from there as a cocky Russian mobster and his army of hoods meet Hutch head on.
The words “who knew” immediately come to mind when considering the star of the show, Hutch.
I defy anyone to pick the two sides to his character before seeing them play out on the big screen.
Odenkirk (probably best known as Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and Jimmy McGill in Better Call Saul) plays a man possessed and you can’t but help admire his performance … for it really is quite something.
I dare say you’ve never seen Christopher Lloyd (Dr Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future series) quite like he appears in Nobody.
He plays Hutch’s father and, like his son, he has two distinct sides to his persona.
It is also impossible not to notice Aleksey Serebryakov as Julian, the brash, bold and belligerent strong-arm man and drug lord. He makes a big impression from when he first appears on screen.
Somewhat underdone and underwritten are Gage Munroe as Hutch’s son and Connie Nielsen as Hutch’s wife, Becca.
The man behind the John Wick franchise, Derek Kolstad, has crafted another mercenary character in Hutch and after a rather tepid start, Kolstad throws the kitchen sink at us – the audience.
Once it moves out of first gear, Nobody is pacey, pulsating and punishing.
The over-the-top nature of it includes much needed humorous elements.
And how eloquently can I wax about the music? David Buckley is responsible and he has mixed classical with the classics with contemporary material, enlivening an already impressive offering.
If you can handle the excessive violence, there is a lot to like in Nobody.
Rated MA, it scores an 8 out of 10.