Not much surprise left in ‘Nobody 2’

 In Nobody 2, an unsurprising and only fitfully entertaining sequel to the 2021 original, Bob Odenkirk revisits the role of a suburban dad who doesn’t seem to have much control over his life. 

   Did I mention that Odenkirk's Hutch is also an assassin and that he's still at it, mostly because he must pay off debts from the havoc he wrought in the first movie. That means more lethal assignments.

   Craving a break from killing, an emotionally battered Hutch proposes to take his wife and two kids to an amusement park where he vacationed as a kid. He has fond memories of the place and wants to create similar memories for his kids. 

   The idea of a suburban doofus wielding near invincible power still has promise, but under the guidance of Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto, the movie teeters dangerously close to one-joke territory: When and how will the hot-tempered Hutch explode?

    Setting the movie in a dated amusement park in the fictional town of Plummerville lends a funky feel to an action/comedy that brings back some of the previous cast, notably Connie Nielsen as Hutch’s wife, Gage Munroe and Paisley Cadorath as his kids, and a mostly waisted Christopher Lloyd, as grandpa Mansell. RZA reprises his role as Hutch’s sword-wielding stepbrother.

  Two additions add interest. John Ortiz (always interesting) appears as the corrupt local sheriff, and Sharon Stone portrays Lendina, a merciless drug lord who has set up her headquarters in Plummerville. The role gives Stone a chance to chew plenty of scenery; she takes full advantage of the opportunity.

  Looking gaunt and a bit depressed, Hutch seldom allows an expression to cross his face. He seems less interesting the second time around because we already know the fire that lies beneath the nondescript front he presents to the world.

  Tjahjanto choreographs much of the movie’s abundant violence for laughs, providing you like the wanton helpings of guns, knives, rifles, explosives, and fists. In a major sight gag, one of the villains has his head sliced in two. A battle on a theme-park boat serves as an illustration of the movie's strategy: to double down on the mayhem in every scene by offering an escalating series of flesh-mangling beats.

   Perhaps to add a bit of thematic weight, Hutch worries that his son will follow in his murderous footsteps. Think of the sequel possibilities that might arise if the series follows Hutch into his dotage and his kid takes over the family business, which began with Hutch’s father.

   Or don’t. For me, one amusing Nobody movie was enough Two struck me as one too many. A possible third? I hope not.*

*Updated to correct two names. Apologies, dear readers.

 

‘Gladiator II’: More but not better

 

    I’d been looking forward to Gladiator II, hoping director Ridley Scott would deliver an epic-scaled movie that provided a healthy dose of sword-and- sandal escapism while paying homage to an idealized version of bygone Roman virtues: honor and strength. 

  What I experienced was a mixture of involvement and disappointment, a movie that prioritizes spectacle as it labors to refresh the structure of the original movie, which made its debut 20 years ago.

   Gone, aside from a few references in flashback, is Russell Crowe as Maximus, an obvious necessity prompted by the fact that Maximus died in the first installment. He's replaced by Paul Mescal as Lucius, who we first meet on the eve of the Roman siege of Numidia, a North African Berber kingdom.

    David Scarpa’s screenplay introduces Lucius as an adult who was taken in by North African "barbarians” (as the Romans refer to its non-Roman subjects) as a child. The Numidians are ripe for conquest by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a loyal Roman who’s devoted to imperial expansion and to the republican ways of the past.

    Early on, we get the whole Scott enchilada: big ships, catapulted fire balls, gory hand-to-hand combat, scaled walls, and flaming arrows. 

    It should surprise no one that the empire is evil. The cunning wickedness of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus -- so important in the first movie -- has been replaced by Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a conniving entrepreneur who owns and wagers on gladiators and angles to surpass those who belong to the senatorial elite.

    Returnees include Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Maximum’s one-time lover.

   As if to differentiate this belated and somewhat boated sequel, two actors (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) play callow brothers who rule the empire, providing dual helpings of cruelty. 

   Plenty of action, much of it set in the Roman Coliseum, follows as the movie ratifies its status as a collection of CGI thrills. Digitally created super-monsters battle gladiators. These include vicious creatures that look like a combination of rabid dogs and monkeys and a rhinoceros the size of a small building.

    At one point, the arena is flooded for a simulated naval battle conducted while man-eating sharks ply the shallow waters. 

   Though obvious, the word "overkill" leaps to mind.

   I won’t bother you with details about a plot that includes reasonably predictable elements that echo developments in first movie. In case it isn't already clear, I'll summarize: After Lucius' wife is killed in the battle for Numida, he's captured and taken to Rome, where Macrinus purchases him and makes him a gladiator.

    The principal performances are all up to snuff. Mescal rages and looks muscular, a man contemptuous of his origins but not entirely freed of them, even as he seeks his vengeance for his wife’s death at Roman hands. 

   Playing a man of conscience, Mescal’s presence is missed when he's not on screen. The movie needed  more of his weight.

   In what becomes the movie's stand-out performance, Washington brings Shakespearean stature to a man of wit and cunning.

   Nielsen acquits herself well as Marcus’ wife, a lady with a "secret" that’s eventually revealed but which is obvious from the start.

   Although many of the movie's characters are based on real historical figures, the minority of viewers who are versed in Roman history in the 200s, may blanch at inaccuracies. 

   Those aside, Gladiator II finds Scott putting himself through the required paces. His battle scenes serve as crowdpleasers, much in the way battling gladiators served the Roman yearning for bloody escapism.

  I found the movie — which unfolds over two and a half hours -- a somewhat mechanical attempt to highlight a checklist of themes: Roman intrigue, Roman debauchery, the Roman taste for spectacle, Roman stoicism in the face of doom, and a buffed version of Roman virtue.

   Put it all together and you have a movie that finds  captivating moments amid a scattered, unexceptional plot. Gladiator II can't replicate the sorrows of the first movie or reach its noble heights.

   As a long-time spectator in the entertainment area, I'll turn my thumb sideways and move on.

 

Need revenge? Better call Bob Odenkirk

 

    Nobody — a prime example of preposterous violence and brutal action tropes — feels derivative and self-conscious in its attempts to dish out as much cathartic vengeance as 91 minutes allows.

   But there is one distinguishing difference between Nobody and the rest of the field: Bob Odenkirk.

   Famous for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Odenkirk makes an unlikely avenger, a new champion of butt-kicking manhood.

    Director Ilya Naishuller begins in a minor key. Odenkirk plays Hutch, a drab guy living a resigned life of droning repetition.  Hutch sleeps next to his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen). She keeps a pillow between them to ward off any possibility of sex.  He takes a bus to the small factory where he handles accounting chores. He watches his kids come and go, indifferent to what appears to be Dad's meaningless life.

   Odenkirk opts to play an anti-Saul Goodman. No wheels churn as various schemes play out in a restless mind. There's no sense that he’s one step ahead of a disaster that he won’t be able to dodge.

   From the start, it looks as if disaster already has struck Hutch's nondescript life, void of even the desperation that might have given it flavor.

   And then the movie begins in earnest. During a home invasion, Hutch finds himself poised to deliver a violent blow to one of the invaders. He demurs, allowing the man and woman to flee. 

    Non-violence comes with a cost. Hutch’s son (Gage Munroe) sees his father's choice as an act of cowardice, although some of Hutch’s co-workers say they respect the pragmatic nature of his decision. After all, no one was killed.

     A low body count, however, doesn't make for a thriller that draws its energies from violent vapors extending as far back as 1974's Death Wish and ably continued here by director Ilya Naishuller.

    A note of caution: The movie's violent choreography is no match for, say, the John Wick movies.

   Predictably, Hutch has a mysterious a past. And, of course, that past involves his ability to wreak violent havoc, to inflict punishment even as he takes beatings that would kill a lesser man.

   The first hint that Hutch isn't the man he appears to be arrives when he exposes a secret radio in his office that allows him to talk to his adoptive brother (RZA), a black man who we learn has had to go into hiding for reasons of his own.

    Hutch also visits his father (Christopher Lloyd),  a dad who knows that his son inevitably must rise like an avenging Phoenix and reclaim his true identity. 

     Of course, it's all nonsense. But then there's Odenkirk. 

     Odenkirk doesn't have the physically imposing stature of, say, a Liam Neeson, who, unlike Hutch, always seems to trying to rescue an imperiled family member. Hutch isn't trying to save his family, which the movie conveniently ushers to safety. What's Hutch trying to save? Maybe his self-respect.

     The movie wastes little time getting down to its real business, staging explosive confrontations that lead to a showdown with a sadistic Russian mobster (Alexey Serebryakov). 

    A freelancer who launders money for the Russian mob, Serebryakov's Yulian is so vicious even the Russian mob finds him a bit over-the-top.

    If you're not part of the crowd that loves over-cranked violence, don't bother. Otherwise, Nobody sustains interest, even though an exaggerated finale makes it feel as if the filmmakers are paying off a genre debt, which they are.

      Nobody concludes with an epilogue suggesting that someone might be thinking franchise, an all-too-familiar prospect. I hope Odenkirk, who's wrapping up Better Call Saul this year, finds something else to keep him busy. Wouldn't it be great if once were enough?

      

She fights for world peace

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine click in an enjoyable Wonder Woman.

It has epic scale, unforced humor, genuine star chemistry and, of course, a female main character. We're talking about Wonder Woman, an enjoyable new addition to the endless stream of comic-book movies that have seized the popular culture, holding it in a sometimes suffocating grip.

But Wonder Woman is a DC Comics movie with an important difference. Because Wonder Woman's main character can be naive about the nature of the humans she encounters, the movie freely can substitute innocence and conviction for hard-bitten cynicism.

In the hands of director Patty Jenkins (Monster), Wonder Woman introduces us to a character with roots in Greek mythology. From an island where Amazon warrior women train to the cratered battlefields of World War I, Wonder Woman makes it clear that Princess Diana, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, has but one objective: bringing peace to the world.

Early on, we learn that the Amazons have conflicting ideas about Diana's destiny. Diana's mother (Connie Nielsen) wants to protect her daughter from the violent life. Diana's aunt (Robin Wright) insists that the girl learn the arts of combat.

Scenes on the all-women island march to a mythic cadence that allows for introduction of the Amazon women's approach to life and for exploration of their relationship to the gods.

Life on the island mostly seems happy until the real world intrudes. A pilot crashes into the ocean off the island's coast. Diana, who has never seen a man before, rushes to the rescue. Pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is being chased by Germans who know that he's a spy who has stolen vital information from the German high command.

Diana eventually leaves her island paradise with Steve: She believes it is her duty to end the slaughter of World War I, something she plans to accomplish by slaying Ares, the god of war. Diana doesn't care that her plan may seem wacky to everyone else. Diana's view: Men only make war when they fall under the evil influence of Ares, rogue son of Zeus.

We know that Diana will be up to the task because we've already seen her spin in the air in captivating slo-mo. We also know that she has powers even she doesn't fully understand.

Jenkins has lots of fun with scenes in London where our super-heroine confronts the peculiar demands of life among ordinary humans. These include suggestions that Diana wear dresses rather than her regular outfit, which boasts a Wonder Woman tiara, a cape, an armored bustier and short shorts.

Diana also carries a shield, a sword and a glowing Lasso of Truth, not exactly routine accoutrements on the streets of London, circa 1918.

Steve rounds up a colorful crew to accompany Diana to the front. Steve's cohorts include a guy who knows how to work the angles in any situation (Said Taghmaoui), a Native American scout (Eugene Brave Rock) and a sharp-shooter (Ewen Bremner) with a lilting singing voice.

We also meet a British politician who says he wants to negotiate an armistice (David Thewlis) and a secretary (Lucy Davis) who works for Steve and adds plenty of spark.

Villainy arrives courtesy of German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and his hideous chemist colleague (Elena Anaya), a woman whose ability to develop lethal gasses has earned her an appropriate nickname: "Doctor Poison."

Gadot claims star status, handling the title-character with charm, sincerity, finesse and a look that exudes beauty and good health. It also doesn't hurt that she and Pine seem to have figured out the intricacies that make for good comic and romantic chemistry or that, at various times, Diana offers crowd-pleasing insistence on her total independence from male authority. It's something she takes for granted.

Those who crave action will find plenty of it: from the training grounds of Diana's island home to the trenches of World War I to a finale that's loaded with the clangor of the customary effects. Wouldn't it have been amazing had Diana, who speaks dozens of languages, been allowed to resolve the movie's problems with more brain than super-power brawn?

Oh well, what can we expect from a movie in which Diana lifts a tank and tosses it as if weighed little more than a Frisbee? Wonder Woman is, after all, a comic-book movie -- and it earns a place among the best of them.

Seeking paradise in the Galapagos

It's doubtful that you'll find a wackier story than the one told in The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, a documentary centered on a German couple that moved to the Galapagos Islands prior to the rise of Hitler.

Directors Dayna Goldfine and Daniel Geller began their efforts after finding black-and-white footage of Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch, the original settlers on the unpopulated island of Floreana in the southern Pacific.

According to the movie's web site, the footage was shot during expeditions by Captain Alan Hancock to the Galapagos Islands, a desolate spot that seems better suited to lizards and giant tortoises than to human beings.

Ritter, a physician who fancied himself a philosopher, was aggrieved when a few other intrepid souls followed him to Floreana, including a purported baroness who seemed to become sexually involved with most of the men on the island.

Life on Floreana wasn't easy, and much of the footage shows Strauch and Ritter working to sustain life by cultivating crops to support their vegetarianism.

Ritter's goal was to forsake the individuality-crushing confines of civilization and community. Naturally, the arrival of other people only fueled Ritter's belief that contact with others meant conflict.

The newbies on Floreana included another German couple and the aforementioned baroness -- one Eloise von Wagner Bosquet -- who brought a couple of lovers with her. The baroness planned to build a hotel on the island.

The story, which includes a possible murder and assorted other mysteries, is carefully assembled with a variety of name actors reading from correspondence by all the participants.

Voices are provided by Cate Blanchett (Strauch), Diane Kruger (as the female member of the second couple) and Connie Nielsen (as the baroness). Thomas Kretschmann reads the words of Ritter.

Interviews with some of the offspring of the handful of people who lived on the Galapagos Islands add a bit of contemporary spin to the proceedings.

The German newspapers wrote about Ritter and Strauch as a new Adam and Eve. It doesn't take much by way of imagination to know that a paradise never found can't be lost.

The Galapagos Affair is an interesting and bizarre story about the way in which noble dreams so often lead to folly.