79% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 123 reviews)
Runtime: 89 minutes
Directed by: Timo Tjahjanto
Starring: The returning faces from the first, plus a few famous faces I did not know were in this
From: Universal
I love you more today than yesterday…
The next few weeks, there is no shortage of movies out that could be seen by me at the cineplex; whether or not I’ll have the time for them is the key question. Nobody 2 was selected yesterday due to it fitting my schedule and the short 90-minute runtime. Furthermore, the first Nobody was a pretty good time (if on the silly side) and getting to see the Hollywood debut of Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto is neat. The segments he did for various horror anthologies are the least worst of overall bad efforts but May the Devil Take You and its sequel are fun horror efforts and his action movies are quite bloody affairs, especially The Night Comes for Us-that gets a high recommendation.
Of course, it’s a Hollywood sequel to a wacky action-comedy so the film is not blood-soaked by any regards. The problems I had with this sequel (where Hutch Mansell takes his family on vacation to a Wisconsin tourist town-if only it had been Wisconsin Dells-and of course even in an area dominated by a small carnival he still finds a lot of trouble) had little to do with Timo’s direction. There were some things that likely would only bother me—this unfortunately includes a certain word that’s heard more often the later you go in the movie and that word lost all its meaning/power by the conclusion.
Nobody 2 is also even sillier than the first; I rolled my eyes once or twice and there are some huge contrivances. I was at times reminded of the John Wick sequels, which isn’t really a compliment as those sequels are far worst than the original. If you thought the first had an antagonist that was a wacky, garish caricature… wait until you see <redacted> play their part. It was a famous name that not only did I not recognize at first, I had no idea they were even in the film—same goes for a famous actor son of a HUGE star. While I did like the original movie better, I hate to sound too negative here as even w/ its flaws, Nobody 2 was still a good time.
Fans of such movies of course hold paramount importance to the action and if it delivers. I say… yes it does. While not gruesomely violent like The Night Comes for Us, blood is shed and as I like to say elsewhere when discussing such films, Dudes Get Wrecked ™. It seems awfully reminiscent of other movies produced in part by 87North Productions—that doesn’t mean the carnage seen here wasn’t appreciated by me. Nobody 2 could have been a disaster; thankfully it was not. After all, Universal just released War of the Worlds on Amazon… shudder. By the way, thanks to everyone who has made that review one of my most popular ever on Letterboxd.
As for Timo Tjahjanto, he’s attached to… The Beekeeper 2. That may not be a bridge I’m willing to cross. The first Beekeeper, enough details have been shared about its plot for me to determine it as too ridiculous even by genre standards. That said, I’m hopeful Tjahjanto has at least a halfway-successful career in the West.
No comments:
Post a Comment