NOBODY takes the ‘one-man army’ trope out of the realms of superspies (007, Derek Flint), hit men/women (John Wick, Salt), vengeful vets (Rambo) and orc-smiters (Aragorn) and plops mission mayhem onto the drooping shoulders and careworn mug of the Guy Next Door. True, he happens to have a ‘background’, but maybe Fred across the street does, too, so it might be wise to watch out who you diss. Platoons of Russian hoods find out in this 2021 sleeper, starring the great Bob Odenkirk as the title zero/hero.

“Give me the goddamn kitty cat bracelet, motherfucker!”

‘Hutch Mansell’ (Odenkirk, 57) disappoints his son when he stops the teen from wrestling with a home intruder. The armed thief and his female partner escape, even with Hutch seeming to have the draw on them. Except for his little daughter, Hutch seems to be a drag for everyone: his ashamed boy, his distanced wife (Connie Nielsen, 54), his taunting brother-in-law, a smug neighbor, the cops. When a search for the perps (they stole his girl’s bracelet) leaves him at rock bottom, Hutch turns a psychological corner that brings him back to his previous life as an ‘auditor’/assassin for a US security agency. Venting, he takes on a group of drunken thugs threatening a woman on a bus, only to find, after magnificently cleaning their clocks, that they work for ‘Yulian Kuznetsov’ (Aleksei Serebryakov), a highly placed Russian mobster. When the outraged Obshchak seek vengeance, Hutch, with a little help from his gamecock old man (Christopher Lloyd) and ‘Harry’ (RZA), his adopted brother, rigs a reception. All Hell, as they say…

Snappily directed by Ilya Naishuller, written by Derek Kolstad and co-produced by David Leitch, creators of the wild and wildly successful John Wick franchise (excuse use of that awful word, may Mr. Wick forgive me–or preferably, may Ballerina) thus the obvious casualty-count resemblance to the Unstoppable Unshaven Man. Yet JW, though adhering to codes of honor, operates in a worldwide mesh of killers who conduct ritual carnage outside legal authority (the biggest death-dealers of all) and is a loner to whom levity is accidental. Hutch, his previous lethal arts backstory, ostensibly working for ‘good’, is a totally ordinary fella, a family man, and does possess a dry sense of humor, something this sort of outlandish thriller needs to accept the essential absurdity enough to keep it from foundering into a flatline. True, it does get rather over-the-top in act three, with the insertions of Lloyd (81 and spry with a pump shotgun) and jokey RZA, but not enough to spoil the wicked fun. As he brilliantly did with the self-sabotaging yet sympathetic Better Call Saul, Odenkirk crafts an ordinary ‘nobody’ into one of the most unusual action figures who’ve sprung up in this Knave New World, cathartic icons of forlorn hope, there to do for us serfs what we can’t and no-one else will—outside of a movie. Paul Kersey, Jack Reacher and Robert McCall would be proud. That smashing knockdown-dragout on the bus is an instant classic. *

“I hope these assholes like hospital food.”

Made for a lean $16,000,000, grossing $27,568,000 in North America, $29,942,000 elsewhere, placing 40th for ’21, secure enough in reviews and receipts to order up a sequel in 2025. Nobody now Somebody.

Filmed in 2019, release delayed by COVID. 92 minutes, with Michael Ironside (69, we all get old), Colin Salmon, Billy MacLellan (Hutch’s dick brother-in-law), Araya Menghesa, Gage Munroe (teenage son ‘Brady), Daniel Bernhardt, Paisley Kadorath (daughter ‘Sammy) and Aleksandr Pal (check windpipe at the door).

* Stuntman Daniel Bernhardt, who plays the leader of the bus slime, worked with Odenkirk for two years getting him in condition to perform the bruising fights believably and not get so comic book out sized (Stallone, Schwarzenegger) as to look ridiculous.