ReelBob: ‘Nobody’ ★★★

Bob Odenkirk channeling Liam Neeson? Sounds crazy, but he's got skills, too, and this ultraviolent action-thriller actually works, despite its preposterous premise.

“Nobody” lulls you into false expectations.

The film opens with a montage of the daily, routine life of Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk). Mansell lives in a nice suburban home with his wife and two children and works for his father-in-law.
His life changes when two burglars break into his house, and he offers no resistance. His son believes him a coward, while Hutch’s wife begins acting chilly toward him.
He also gets grief at work from his father-in-law and brother-in-law.
Fed up, Mansell begins going out at night. At this point, you suspect that “Nobody” is going to take a “Death Wish” vigilante route.

And in a manner of speaking, it does, until an incident on a bus begins to provide hints of the man Mansell used to be.

“Nobody,” at 92 minutes, transforms into a bloody, ultraviolent and cartoonish action-thriller in which Mansell, using skills that have lain dormant for years, becomes a one-man army, dismantling dozens of minions of a Russian mobster that, to exact revenge, want to harm Mansell’s family.
The entire affair is preposterous. “Nobody” is one of those movies in which you don’t ask questions but simply go with the flow.

This freewheeling and exciting movie is so far out there that, despite the mayhem, you actually begin to laugh. It’s almost as if “Nobody” were a satire on the recent spate of action movies starring Liam Neeson, but with the Ordinary Joe-like Odenkirk in the Neeson role.
It is difficult taking seriously a movie in which all the bad guys are cliched, psychopathic Russians with enough firepower to overthrow a small country. But when they come up against Mansell, they drop like dominoes as he eliminates them as easily as scraping a bug off his shoe.

Director Ilya Naishuller, known for another hard-hitting action film, “Hardcore Henry,” has his cast expend thousands of rounds of bullets, yet it seems only Mansell hits his target.

One of the delights of “Nobody” is the casting of Christopher Lloyd as Mansell’s father, a former FBI agent. He lives in a nursing home where he spends most of his time watching old Westerns — until he decides to get off his easy chair and lend his son a hand.

Russian actor Aleksey Serebryakov is Yulian, the crazy mob leader who loves to perform karaoke in his nightclub, when he is not breaking furniture over the heads of inept underlings or shooting people.

“Nobody” is delightfully savage. It is too unbelievable to even try taking seriously. The film truly is a guilty-pleasure popcorn muncher.

It ain’t art, but the movie is diverting and definitely will take your mind off any troubles you may have.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.

NOBODY
3 stars out of 4
(R), strong violence, bloody images, language, drug use