TAS Reviews: Nobody
In the past couple of years, you might've heard of this little action franchise by the name of John Wick. In the past couple of years, the Keanu Reeves-led series has established itself as one of the biggest original action franchises in cinema today, delivering hit after hit (no pun intended). Nobody is the latest action movie from John Wick writer Derek Kolstad. It is directed by Ilya Naishuller, director of the not-so-critically-acclaimed Hardcore Henry and one of my favourite music videos of the past couple of years: The Weeknd's False Alarm. Nobody is about an average Joe, played by Bob Odenkirk (from Better Call Saul fame), who wakes up in the dead of night to find a group of two burglars breaking into his house and assaulting his family. Joe, wanting to avoid conflict, refuses and fails to take initiative to help protect his family, and is shamed for it by his family and neighbours. This then begins his transformation into an action hero. Nobody is by no means a bad movie. As a matter of fact, I would call it a decent one. But it is also a tremendous missed opportunity of a film. Let's try to understand why.
Have you ever heard come across a movie premise that makes you think "huh, this is quite an interesting idea and take on a specific genre. This could be interesting?" You buy a ticket, watch the movie, it starts off interestingly, only for the movie itself to lose sight of what made the premise special in the first place and fall into the predictable tropes of the genre. This is exactly the case with Nobody. The idea of an out of his element, "cowardly" average Joe who is afraid of conflict trying to force himself into the role of an action hero could've been a fresh take on the genre - offering us a unique type of hero. Though the earlier stages of the movie promise this to be the case, the originality of this premise is thrown out of the window, as the movie devolves into a generic action movie: a John Wick knockoff, but without the excellent world building, worse action and the absence of Keanu Reeves. The transformation of Bob Odenkirk's character into an action hero isn't convincing, because it isn't a transformation at all. It just feels like the writer gave up on exploring the uniqueness of the premise, and just decided to make Odenkirk into a generic, action hero. What's the point of promising a unique premise if you're just going to abandon what made your movie special after the first act?
Because of this, the genius casting of Bob Odenkirk is undermined. Bob Odenkirk does not give off "action hero" vibes at all, and it was for that reason that he was the perfect lead for this movie. But because the movie treats him as a glorified action hero and has him whooping 10 people's asses with no explanation at all about how he is so skilled, his casting doesn't work at at all. He gives a solid performance, and is one of the stronger aspects of the movie, but for this particular role, his casting feels like fitting a square peg into a round hole. The majority of the supporting actors and actresses in the movie - including Connie Nielsen, RZA, Gage Munroe and Aleksei Serebryakov - were underwhelming. There is one exception to this rule, which I will discuss later on in the review.
Structure is an important element of storytelling, and bad structure can sink your movie. Good structure is important to building momentum in a movie and securing your audiences's interest, having them on the edge of their seat by the end of each scene. Although I wouldn't say Nobody is a terrible offender of this, it is flawed structure-wise and the movie's momentum suffers because of it. Every movie has an inciting incident, also known as the "call to action." This is the moment which kicks the story into gear. For Star Wars, it is finding his Aunt and Uncle murdered which serves as the inciting incident and propels Luke to embark on his journey. In Hunger Games, it is Katniss's decision to volunteer as tribute which serves as the inciting incident, setting the story into motion. The problem with Nobody isn't that it doesn't have an inciting incident. It's the fact there are two inciting incidents. The first inciting incident is the burglars breaking into the protagonist's house, which serves as the call-to-action, as Bob Odenkirk sets out to avenge his family and right his wrong. Then, once this story wraps up, something completely unrelated to the previous storyline occurs, which propels us into the real story of the movie. Because of this, the movie feels like two seperate movies jammed into one, and the movie doesn't truly begin until about the half-way mark, which is a terrible thing to say about a movie. The first storyline was also much more engaging and relevant to the character's central flaw, so I would've much rather that the entire movie focus on him trying to get revenge on those who broke into his house, as opposed to exploring this for 25 minutes before starting a completely unrelated story which doesn't serve the character well.
As I mentioned earlier, director Ilya Naishuller directed one of my favourite music video's of the past couple of years: False Alarm. Take a glance at his wikipedia page, and you'll see that he's directed about 10 times more music videos than he has movies. This doesn't surprise me at all, because while I was watching the movie, I couldn't help but think to myself "this feels like a music video" and not in a good way. There is about 10 original songs used in the movie, and none of them particularly fit well with the movie, and there are a lot of abrupt cuts and ending in the movie, which contributed to this feel. In that sense, it reminded me of Suicide Squad, which played far too many original songs even when it didn't make sense and felt like a Guardians of The Galaxy rip-off.
Last of all, this is the first movie I've seen in a while that I would describe as "problematic." I've never been the one to get upset about a movie portraying characters, morals and values I don't believe in, but only under the condition that I can sense that the director doesn't condone the terrible things that are being depicted. This movie doubles down on and helps enforce this idea of men "needing" to be "protectors", and the protagonist is condemned and shamed for not living up to this ideal. Despite the fact that the mother of the family, who did nothing to protect her family, is never once condemned or looked-down upon for not doing so. Breaking Bad deals with a similar topic - but in that series, the theme is treated with care and poise, Walter White's arc is portrayed as a negative one and the series never feels like it is contributing to the values perpetrated by this antagonist. But because this movie uses toxic masculinity as nothing more than an excuse to blow shit up and have cool set-pieces, I felt the values of this movie were harmful. Perhaps this wouldn't be an issue if the movie didn't treat that theme so seriously starting off, only to launch into a bunch of crazy, unrealistic, brainless action sequences. It would be like if the first 20 minutes of Joker were about the seriousness of Arthur's illness and an examination about how society's bullying can cripple an individual, and then the next 1 hour and 40 minutes were a pulpy, "fun" Joker movie where he tears shit up and draws smile's on people's faces without building on the themes explored earlier. It results in a movie that is at odds with itself.
That said, Nobody is by no means a "bad" movie, and as I mentioned earlier, it was a decent watch at the cinemas. A lot of this has to do with the great action. It's not quite on the level of creativity as the John Wick movies - which feature an action sequence in which the primary weapon of choice is a book, and another where the weapon of choice is a pencil - but the movie offers a handful of exciting, thrilling, nail-biting action that is even more brutal, gory and gritty than anything in those movies. This becomes gratuitous at times, but for the most part, it is a thrill to watch, and goes head-to-head with some of the best hand to hand, realistic combat being brought to life on the big screen today. Although the movie doesn't maintain its quality to the finish line, the first act of the movie is solid as a whole. It features some interesting character work, and does a solid job of exploring the originality that was promised by the premise. There is also a brilliantly edited montage portraying the "ordinariness" of Bob Odenkirk's character, which got me on board with the character instantly. I mentioned earlier that the supporting characters were pretty weak, but there is one exception to this rule in Christopher Lloyd (who plays Doc in the Back To The Future movies). He has one moment in the movie which got the biggest laugh out of me and the rest of the theatre, and that moment alone was the best 20 seconds of the entire movie. The movie also enjoys a brisk pace, and at 1 hour and 30 minutes of run-time, it's hard to say that it overstayed it's welcome too much.
Conclusion
Nobody is a mixed bag of a movie. It wastes its central premise, suffers from structural problems, is sometimes edited like a music video and feels like two movies forced into one. However, it's not without it's redeeming qualities, featuring some fantastic action sequences, a solid (if slightly miscast) lead performance, a genuinely entertaining, interesting first act and a scene-stealing performance from Christopher Lloyd. For those reasons, I would still recommend Nobody to anybody who is interested or enjoys more realistic action movies. It wasn't until John Wick: Chapter 2 that I fell in love with that franchise, and Nobody certainly sets itself up for sequel potential, and although I would be interested in seeing where they take the story next, I don't know if the foundations are there for a story that I could fall in love with.
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