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.

 

The adventures of an unlikely gigolo

John Turturro wrote and directed Fading Gigolo, a comedy built around the notion that attractive women would pay an obscure florist, played by Turturro, to have sex with them.

The movie's sexual antics, which take place with women played by Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara, are supplemented by a more appealing strain of comedy.

Toward the end of the movie, Woody Allen -- who plays Turturro's pimp Murray -- is dragged before a court of Brooklyn-based Hasidic rabbis who charge him with corrupting the morals of a beautiful, gap-toothed widow (Vanessa Paradis).

Murray's troubles start when he convinces Paradis's Avigal, who's also a member of the Hasidic community, to visit Turturro's Fioravante.

In a series of tender massage scenes, Fioravante awakens the widow's dormant senses. Avigal begins to overcome her grief and isolation.

The odd relationship between Fioravante and Avigal displeases Dovi (Liev Schreiber). He's the leader of a Hasidic neighborhood crime patrol, and he wants to marry Avigal, who seems to have had a half dozen or so children.

Although Fading Gigolo qualifies as a bona fide mess, it contains moments that suggest how close Tuturro came to finding a tone that perfectly reflects the hodgepodge quality of contemporary life.

Perhaps to emphasize the notion of blurring ethnic boundaries, Allen's Murray lives with a black woman (Tonya Pinkins) who has four sons, a relationship that seems almost incidental to anything else in the film.

I say all of this as a way of expressing fondness for a movie that I can't defend as a success.

Turturro's Fioravante is a quiet, almost stoic man, perhaps the wrong main character in a film that (in my view) needed to surrender to its wackiness, to thoroughly embrace the comic humanity of a moment when so many lines are being erased and so many new lines have yet to be drawn.