Rich Pickings on Nobody

In a shot that bookmarks both the intro and denouement of the film, we see Hutch Mansell (a feisty and fiery Bob Odenkirk) being interviewed by FBI, intrigued as they are as to how and why he got into impersonating an agent. We flash back through a week of his ‘normal’ life, that is before his family home was burglarised, throwing him into a headstrong desire for revenge.

We discover that Hutch had for some time given up his life of violence and was now keen to keep his head down out of both the military and gangster scene. But it is the theft of his daughter’s Kitty Kat bracelet that is like a red flag to a bull. So he takes his grandad’s ID, gun and ammunition and starts to search the tattooists as one of the robbers had a distinctive mark on her lower arm.

It is while he is going round the slums looking for a lead he witnesses a mob of drunks get onto a bus and are bothering a lone teenage girl. No spoilers here but this is one of the many carefully choreographed fights with terrific stunts so real you almost squirm. Leaving the bus with injured bodies strewn around Hutch casually tells the driver, ‘Sorry about the mess’. While the girl thanks him as her guardian angel.

His wife is rightly alarmed by his considerable wounds, but Hutch is more concerned with getting back to having a normal married sex life. And unfortunately for Hutch, one of the thugs he hospitalised is in a coma and is related to psychotic gangster Yulian (a seriously scary Alaexey Serebryakov).

Then there is a, stark contrast between blissful family life with Hutch cooking a lasagne for them all; and the black-hooded mobsters who invade his home with enough firepower to take out twenty men, no matter one. Despite putting up an incredibly brave and powerful resistance he is taken off in their boot, leaving his family in the cellar. Even cuffed up in a boot can not stop his willpower and he causes the car to crash, even more numbers on the casualty list that is being fed back to a furious Yulian.

But rather than wait for Yulian to find him on the run instead Hutch goes barging into Yulian’s nightclub guns-ablazing. Then this leads to one of the most dynamic and frenetic car chases you are likely to see on film. While you have to admit the violence is far-fetched and gratuitous it is glorious in its excess.

I’m not normally one for action films but Nobody has just the right blend of fast-cut fantastically choreographed fights with a narrative quest that is entirely believable (though believable is not the word for Hutch’s superpowers!) Would make a great start for you cinema-goers who have been locked out of the venues for so long with its exciting visuals and incredible sound too.

Reviewed on 16 June 2021. On general release see imdb.com for a showing near you.