Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Nobody Beats Midas

Next time a guy feels like a nobody, he can take heart he's in kickass company. He can have a look at 2021's Nobody, an action movie starring Bob Odenkirk--Saul from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad--who kind of gets the chance to play Walter White here. The story is far less substantial than Breaking Bad, though, and this movie is unabashedly an indulgent men's fantasy. It has some real nice fight scenes.

Odenkirk plays Hutch, an ordinary family man whose boring routine we see demonstrated with rapidly repeated edits of him taking out the trash, getting coffee, and going to work. Then some burglars break in and, despite being able to get the drop on one, he lets them go. After this, his family, friends, and even the police make unsubtle cracks about his manhood. Oh, little do they know!

Where Breaking Bad had its protagonist solve his emasculation by turning to crime, Nobody has a protagonist who essentially has superpowers he's morally and legally permitted to exercise at any moment. In this world, power comes at no cost. It's just pure, sweet power, baby.

First he decides to take on a group of gangsters harassing a young woman on a bus, a really nicely choreographed tussle. Then he finds himself systematically taking down a Russian mob boss.

Christopher Lloyd has a small role as Hutch's father who, for some reason, seems to be equally competent with guns and fists--thanks to creative editing (Lloyd's actually looking very frail).

The movie's pure fluff but we're all in the mood for that now and then.

Nobody is available on HBOMax.

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