By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Nobody 2 is a sequel to Nobody, a small but good action movie released in 2021, that takes the original and adds some seriously crazy high voltage. It’s a throwback to the days of gonzo action movies like Crank and Shoot ‘Em Up, the kind of movie where it doesn’t care how silly things get as long as someone’s head is blown off.
The Cancellation Of Gonzo Action Movies
If you’ve never heard the term “gonzo action movie” before, that makes sense. Hollywood stopped making them after an early, blood-soaked boom in the style during the early 2000s.
That gonzo renaissance happened partly due to successes like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings. They had proven there was huge value in giving auteur filmmakers buckets of money and letting them make whatever they wanted, however they wanted, and that formula was being tested on everyone and everything. Some of those filmmakers wanted to make over-the-top action movies.
At the same time, the internet had created a new cadre of independent online film communities and critics. Young voices with sudden influence who were ready to watch and champion the kinds of movies old school snobbery would have sneered at.
This combination of events is how that era ended up with the Judd Apatow-led explosion in ultra-offensive, ultra-funny Rated R comedy. It’s how we got all kinds of strange and interesting sci-fi and drama, as directors got the backing they needed to push boundaries. It’s also how we got Jason Statham.
Statham is now a household name, but he was an up-and-comer back then. He was a cult favorite first, and his popularity as an on-screen ass kicker grew based on his willingness to top-line movies of the wildest and most violent variety.
Jason Statham was the king of gonzo action movies. His films were over the top and free of restraint. They were violent at John Wick-level but without any self-seriousness and ten times the gratuitousness. Sometimes, they were all that and also really silly.
Statham’s Crank movies may have been the pinnacle of that gonzo action style, but other stars were dabbling in it too. Clive Owen’s Shoot ‘Em Up was like a live-action, R-rated Looney Tunes. And Nic Cage made a Ghost Rider sequel that featured a scene in which he pees fire on the film’s screen, just for the hell of it.
And then it all went away. Society tightened up. Independent publishers were buried as old media corporations poured pressure and money into the internet to supplant them. Movies and filmmakers began feeling leveraged to push a specific message as cancel culture activists issued threats. It was no longer safe to take risks.
The effect of this was most obviously seen in comedy. In 2017, Daddy’s Home 2 was released, and that would be Hollywood’s last major comedy film released in theaters for the next eight years.
Comedy wasn’t the only casualty. This was no longer an environment where Jason Statham could make an action movie in which he had to engage in either sex or murder every ten minutes to live. Yes, that is the plot of Crank, if you haven’t seen it.
Now it’s all coming back. 2025 saw the return of comedy with The Naked Gun, and at the same time, unhinged R-rated gonzo action movies are making a comeback too. 2022 saw the release of the Violent Night, 2023 gave us Cocaine Bear, and now here’s Nobody 2.
Nobody 2 Sets Silly On Fire And Rips Its Legs Off
Nobody 2 gets progressively more ridiculous as it goes on, until our hero is planting land mines in the ball pit at an amusement park and engaging in a machine gun firefight while sliding down a water slide.
There’s a wolf, a black ninja, Doc Brown with a Gatling gun, and Sharon Stone giving one of the most unhinged villain performances I’ve ever seen on screen in anything. Imagine if Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman character from Tropic Thunder (another successful 2000s experiment in excess) decided to become a psychotic killer, and you’d have the basic genesis of Stone’s Lendina. She’s even got the dance moves.
It’s all anchored by the most unlikely action star, 62-year-old Bob Odenkirk in jorts and a sensible polo shirt.
If there’s a flaw in Nobody 2’s madness, it’s probably Odenkirk, who isn’t all that great at pulling off some of the stunts. The movie does its best to turn him into John Wick, and the fight choreography is tremendous; he’s just not always up to selling it at his near-retirement age.
It’s forgivable because Odenkirk’s aw-shucks I’m-a-nobody persona is a significant component in what makes the movie fun. And besides, Nobody 2 isn’t asking you to take it seriously.
Gonzo action movies are back and this time, I hope they’re here to stay.
