Every action movie worth their salt has a catchphrase, and “Nobody,” in theatres only, has a pretty good one. “Don’t call 911,” Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) says to his wife (Connie Nielsen) before taking on an army of baddies. It’s his “I’ll be back,” a line that tells you everything you need to know about the character’s confidence in his special set of skills.
But, when we first meet him unassuming suburban dad Hutch leads a life of quiet desperation. Under appreciated at home, a joke at work, he makes Rodney Dangerfield look like a well-respected man about town by comparison.
He is, by his own admission, a nobody.
When burglars invade his home, his son (Gage Munroe) fights back, but Hutch freezes. Later, when one of the cops of the scene says, “You know, if this was my family…” Hutch’s humiliation hangs heavy in the unspoken words.
But there’s more to Hutch than meets the eye. Turns out he’s an everyman who can kill every man. A former clean-up guy for “one of those three letter organizations,” he left the game for a normal life, but “over-corrected” and became everybody’s doormat. “I always knew it was a facade,” he says of his suburban life, “but it lasted longer than I expected.”
The aftermath of the burglary awakens a long dormant piece of his personality and when he single-handedly takes on a group of Russian toughs on a bus—to the strains of Steve Lawrence crooning “I’ve Gotta Be Me”—he earns the attention of karaoke singing crime boss Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksey Serebryakov).
What follows is a violent, funny mix of “John Wick” and “Home Alone.”
There isn’t much to “Nobody” except for Hutch’s transformation and his ever-escalating way of offing the hordes of gun toting goons sent to silence him. Director Ilya Naishuller keeps the narrative to a minimum, doling out the exposition in the form of action instead of words. It’s fun, fast-paced and owes a nod to Guy Ritchie’s patented tricky editing and may be the most unexpected good time at the movies since terrible people killed John Wick’s dog.
From bewildered to badass, Odenkirk is an unlikely action star. Slight and wiry, he’s a like a coiled snake, and when he strikes he takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’. Unlike most action stars he gets the crap knocked out of him, but like most action stars, he’s relentless. It’s about as far away from his work on the “Mr. Show” as you could get. It’s more like a bloodied and bruised 1970s one man army character—think Charles Bronson—than anything he has done before.
It’s a compelling character, but a movie like “Nobody” is nothing without the fight scenes. Rest assured the action sequences are, as Hutch’s dad David (Christopher Lloyd) says, “just a bit excessive, but glorious.”
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Erin Paul to have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries,” the family drama “Leave No Trace” and the love letter to one of Manhattan’s most famous hotels, “Always at the Carlyle.”
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the latest Marvel superhero flick “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries” and the glitz documentary “Always at the Carlyle.”
The trouble with making a feel good movie about a scoundrel is twofold. Either the scoundrel is neutered, which makes them less interesting, or remains a scoundrel, which complicates the feel good vibe. “Boundaries,” a new film starring Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, tries to have it both ways and ends up in the mushy middle.
Farmiga is Laura, a single mom with son Henry (Lewis MacDougall), a house full of rescued animals and daddy issues. “I’m so messed up I can’t even tell my therapist everything,” she says. She’s been working at setting up boundaries with her father Jack—when he calls the name display reads, “Don’t Pick Up!”—but when he gets kicked out of his nursing home due to his “unorthodox“—i.e. “illegal”—ways of making money she agrees to help him by driving him to Los Angeles to live with his other daughter Jojo (Kristen Schaal).
The formerly estranged father and daughter, along with Henry and a backseat full of stray dogs set out for what should be an uneventful trip. Trouble is, Jack is the above-mentioned scoundrel and a drug dealer who fills the trunk with $200,000 of marijuana he plans on selling along the way. When he isn’t dealing they detour to visit old friends, like Stanley (Christopher Lloyd), a nudist art forger and other ghosts from Jack and Laura’s past. As dad gets up to his old tricks Laura sees a different side of the man she thought she knew. But can he really change or is her ex-husband Leonard (Bobby Cannavale) right when he says, “An elephant will always be an elephant. He will never be a monkey.”
“Boundaries” has a fine cast trapped by a conventional script.
Farmiga battles through the family dramedy clichés to portray Laura as vulnerable and protective, a woman who has filled the hole in her heart with her stray animals and a fierce love of her Henry.
MacDougall is strong as a troubled youth who, when he isn’t drawing nude portraits of his friends and teachers to reveal their true souls, is caught up in the adventure of getting to know his untraditional grandfather.
It is Plummer, however, who brings the charm. He’s likely too old to be playing Farmiga’s father but his trademarked twinkle shines through. When Laura says, “You make people fall in love with you and then you leave,” she sums up both Jack’s appeal and his selfishness. Plummer, at 88, is a formidable actor whose mere presence elevates this Cliché-A-Thon from “Old Codger on a Road Trip Part XXII” to “Skilful Actor Transcending the Material.” It’s a terrific performance that nonetheless rings hollow. Jack is a man who only ever cared about himself, who abandoned his family and calls his relationship with Henry “a temporary situation,” and is the square peg rammed into this round hole of a feel good story.
In movies like “Boundaries” (MILD SPOILER!!) everyone gets a happy ending but Jack would have been more interesting if writer-director Shana Feste had allowed the scoundrel to remain a scoundrel.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show guest host Ken Connors to talk about the small scale superheroes “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries,” the father and daughter drama “Leave No Trace” and the love letter to one of Manhattan’s great hotels, “Always at the Carlyle.”
Welcome to the House of Crouse. In “Maudie” Ethan Hawke plays a gruff Nova Scotian man who learns how to love. How brusque is he? “You walk funny,” he says when he first meets her. “You a cripple? You sick?” Not exactly a charmer. We talk about the film and his love of Nova Scotia. Then we go long with Ann-Margret, talking about her life, career–including a twenty-two foot on-stage tumble that almost ended her career–and her new movie, Going in Style. It’s all good stuff so c’mon in and sit a spell!
A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style” and “Song top Song.”
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style,” “Song to Song” and the documentary “Giants of Africa.”
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, the “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Going in Style,” “Song to Song” and the documentary “Giants of Africa.”
Every action movie worth their salt has a catchphrase, and “Nobody,” in theatres only, has a pretty good one. “Don’t call 911,” Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) says to his wife (Connie Nielsen) before taking on an army of baddies. It’s his “I’ll be back,” a line that tells you everything you need to know about the character’s confidence in his special set of skills.
