August, like February, is where movies are sent to die. The summer is winding down, and with kids back in school, studios are just looking for movies to unload, hoping to make a few dollars while saving their next big-budget releases for the holidays. Sure, there are some exceptions, but for every one good one (Alien: Romulus), you get five that are among the worst to come out all year (Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). And then we have the films that have a small but dedicated fanbase looking forward to their sequels no matter when they come out, and this is the category that Nobody 2 falls into. While it doesn’t do much to evolve the formula, it takes what made the first one so good, throws in a lot more humor and heart, and ends up being one of the better movies of the year—and definitely the summer.
Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is a busy man. Since the events of the first film, he has been working his assassin gig nonstop to repay the debt he owes for his destruction of a Russian bank. This takes a toll on his family, as his absence causes them to drift even further apart. Realizing he needs a break, he takes them on vacation to the place where he made his favorite childhood memories—the Plummerville amusement park. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and the family soon learns that the entire place is actually a smuggling front for crime lord Lendina (Sharon Stone), who is none too pleased that these tourists are putting a damper on her operations. With her minions proving too inept to deal with the problem, she and her elite army of operatives swarm the town in an attempt to get rid of them once and for all. Needless to say, they are quite unprepared for the hell that Hutch and his family are about to unleash upon them.
Any new hitman movie is going to be immediately compared to John Wick, and for good reason. Wick reinvented the genre, and it feels like almost every single one since then has either been heavily influenced by it or is trying to mimic it. While Nobody 2 shows some signs of this, it still manages to be its own thing. Sure, Hutch is a badass, and his training lets him plow through bad guys with ease, but the similarities end there. He also has to juggle his family life alongside his professional one—a much deadlier work-life balance, if you will. Mind you, his family is fully aware of what he does, so without the need to hide it, they deal with the exasperation of “Dad’s working again” in a much more wry and humorous way than the normal conceit of “working late at the office.”
Speaking of funny, this ramps up the humor significantly and has some legitimate laugh-out-loud moments. Not that this is pure comedy, but by carefully interspersing lightheartedness between—and even during—the action scenes, it creates a more fleshed-out world and not just an excuse to jump from one fight to the next.
While the idea of a hitman just trying to live a normal life isn’t unique, Nobody 2 makes it feel different by balancing it with the family-life aspects. It still manages to deliver a ton of action and over-the-top violence, but by sprinkling in humor, it changes the formula enough to stand out without trying to reinvent the genre. There may be nothing groundbreaking here, but what it does, it does well—and it leaves the audience wanting more. So even if this is an August release, I hope it succeeds as it deserves to build its fanbase so we can get more stories told in this world.