Nobody (2021)
Directed by Ilya Naishuller; screenplay by Derek Kolstad; starring Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen and Aleksei Serebryakov.
2.5/5
When I first saw the trailer for Nobody – a film being written by Derek Kolstad (responsible for the John Wick films) and directed by Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry) – I was somewhat surprised by what it seemed to be going for: mild-mannered suburban father taking the law into his own hands after he’s emasculated by a couple of home intruders. A bit of a modern take on Death Wish, maybe (the original not that Bruce Willis reboot.)
At the time, I thought to myself, surely it’s not going to be that brazen about it. Surely there’s something more to this. But upon seeing it, I’ve made the discovery of the century that in actual fact there is not anything more to it. If a past-their-prime American dad’s power fantasy – the suburbanite’s Equaliser, if you will – is something you’re curious about, by all means give this film a shot but don’t expect a particularly compelling time if you do.
It opens by cycling through just over a week in the life of the numb-to-the-world suburbanite, Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk). Well, no, I tell a lie; the film really opens with a prologue that sets up some potential plot points that are never actually paid off in any real capacity – literally only being solved in the last few seconds of the film.
But back to Hutch. He’s a man who sleeps behind a wall of pillows that separates him from his wife (Connie Nielsen) every night, a man who just can’t seem to connect with his son anymore, who always misses the bin collection – the bin collection that seems to happen every morning (is this an American thing?)
Point is, he’s a man who has most certainly fallen short of traditional expectation. Most importantly, it appears he’s fallen completely short of what it means – to Hutch’s brother- and father-in-law, his wife, his neighbour, even his son – to be a man in the modern era.
One night, though, things start to shift. Two petty thieves – one armed with a handgun – break into the Mansell household with the goal of nabbing some hard cash. When their backs are turned, though, an opening for Hutch to disable them arises, a moment for him to redeem himself in the eyes of his family. But Hutch freezes, stops dead in his tracks, falling short once again.
It’s a moment he struggles to live down. His son looks at him with even more contempt than before. Even the neighbour starts to chime in with the helpful observation that if it’d had been his house, things would’ve ended up differently. All of it gets to be too much and, one night, Hutch snaps, and takes to the streets to inflict vengeance upon those who’ve wronged him and his.
What I find curious about a lot of the criticism regarding this is that many see Nobody as a bit of a commentary on manhood; Bob Odenkirk being well a little beyond the pinnacle of athleticism at 58 years-old, the knowing depiction of the kinds of guy that take to ribbing Hutch.
But I really don’t see it as anywhere near successful in this area. Truffaut once pointed out that there are no anti-war films, and his point was generally thought to be touching on the notion that any film indulging in the drama of warfare will inevitably glorify it. And the same is true here. Yes, there are some superficial subversions going on, but all the film amounts to is Hutch, the sad dad, turning to violence to feel alive again, justified in his doing so merely on the strength that he simply does it better than any of those guys whose machismo was a little hollow.
Also of note is the difference between writer Derek Kolstad’s work on this, and his repeatedly excellent outings with the John Wick saga. Wick is just as much a power fantasy as Nobody (I do want to stress that I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with power fantasy, much as it gets a bad rap) and there are endless similarities between the two, but a key departure separates them. Wick isn’t pretending to be more than it is.
If anything, that film’s overindulgence and larger than life stylism aid in its appearance as nothing more than a bit of a violent romp. Nobody’s pseudo-commentary on the other hand distinctly situates it within a societal discussion. It becomes a film about something in particular. Watching the Wick films on repeat might give you some bad notions, but enjoying those films isn’t going to delude you into thinking the road to self-actualisation is paved with blood and broken teeth.
But that’s not the only point of departure between this and Wick. Where Wick is breakneck and slick, this is slow and brutal, but when that brutality starts to become a bit numbing, all you’re left with is that laborious slowness.
Early on in Hutch’s campaign of plausibly weighty violence, he finds himself confronted by the prospect of a showdown with some black-leather-jacket-wearing thugs. As he sits at the back of the bus, he whispers a prayer to the driver to “please, God, let them on.” The driver, for whatever reason, opens the doors.
The fight scene that follows is one you’ve probably seen a bit of if you’ve watched any of the film’s promotional material. At first, it’s thrilling, there’s a distinct joy to seeing the old-timer get back into the groove – and Odenkirk embodies the role very well – he takes some shots, inflicts some too, but what that promo material probably doesn’t show you is how long the thing is.
It just keeps going. And going. And going. Wick does this too, but there’s a dynamism present there that isn’t here.
Moments in the sequence are clearly supposed to escalate the drama a little, but either for lack of discipline or simply creativity, the structure these moments are intended to construct just falls apart. That escalation isn’t felt. It’s just repetitiously laborious. And it just keeps going.
And that’s how most of it is. It’s dull, and once Hutch picks up where he apparently once left off – there’s something in his past as a military bureaucrat that he’s not letting on about – there’s never much danger that’s going to having you holding your breath. There’s a Russian mobster involved, a violent one at that, but there’s never the sense that he’s one-upped Hutch and he’s just utterly forgettable.
At the end of the day, what’s most disappointing for me is that the film really is as straightforward as I was dreading it might be and it means it’s something a little more egregious than just being a forgettable action flick. At its core, Nobody is a film about someone who only seems to want to prove to the other men around him that he’s cooler than they are deep down, where it somehow matters. It doesn’t sit right.
Watched on 8th June 2021