Producers: Kelly McCormick, David Leitch, Marc Provissiero, Braden Aftergood and Bob Odenkirk   Director: Timo Tjahjanto   Screenplay: Derek Kolstad, Aaron Rabin, Bob Odenkirk and Umair Aleem   Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, John Ortiz, Christopher Lloyd, RZA, Colin Hanks, Colin Salmon, Gage Munroe, Paisley Cadorath, David MacInnis, Lucius Hoyos, Daniel Bernhardt, Michael Ironside and Sharon Stone   Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C+

Much of the fun of the first “Nobody” (2021) derived from watching meek office guy Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) morph into a super-effective government assassin (ex, actually).  The surprise of that transformation is gone in this sequel, of course, and though the script by Derek Kolstad (who wrote the original), along with Aaron Rubin, Umair Aleem and Odenkirk, tries to recapture it by framing things as a road trip, the result isn’t the same.  “Nobody 2” emerges as merely another orgy of stylish comic violence in the John Wick mold (Kolstad, of course, created that series), and though it’s better than most recent clones (think the execrable “Love Hurts”), it suggests, along with “Ballerina,” the attempt to expand the Wick franchise, that the popularity of the genre is waning.

The movie opens with a nod to its predecessor as Hutch and his wife Becca Connie Nielsen), both worse for wear, are being grilled by a couple of government types.  Then we flash back to the Mansell’s suburban home, where Hutch is trying to maintain a mood of normal domesticity.  But he’s in hock to the agency where he formerly worked, whose head, The Barber (Colin Salmon), requires him to take on missions to pay off the debt he incurred when the U.S. assumed what he owed to the Russian mob for destroying their stash in the first movie.  Becca is none too happy with the arrangement, which requires him to go off on missions like one in which he demolishes a bunch of security men in an elevator—and then some other baddies afterward—to retrieve a data file.  She thinks her exhausted husband is neglecting her and their kids, teen Brady (Gage Munroe) and younger daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath). 

So Hutch decides they should take a family vacation to Wild Bill’s Midway and Waterpark, the amusement venue in Plummerville where his father David (Christopher Lloyd) took him (Nolan Grantham) and his brother Harry (Jahron Wilson) when they were kids—the happiest time of his youth, as he recalls.  The kids may be reluctant and Becca dubious, but they pack the van, pick up grandpa from the retirement home, and drive to the park, which turns out to be a run-down wreck run by self-described town boss Henry (John Ortiz).

The town itself is even more of a problem.  It’s the corrupt linchpin of a criminal enterprise controlled on a day-by-day basis by Henry and the sheriff (Colin Hanks), but ultimately by Lendina (Sharon Stone), the uber-nasty owner of a casino where big winners are likely to wind up dead.  And Hutch and his family are drawn into its malign orbit.  First the sheriff accuses Hutch of staring at him, and when Brady gets into an altercation at the arcade with Max (Lucius Hoyos), Henry’s son, it escalates into a brawl in which Hutch demolishes some of the security guards.  That brings the ire of the sheriff, who sends his goons to attack Hutch in a second fight sequence, a spectacular melee aboard a decaying Duck Boat.

Despite losing the tip of a pinkie in the scuffle, the victorious Hutch is drawn further into the morass when he finds that the sheriff has kidnapped Max and, in saving the kid, he destroys the stash of cash and barrels of alcohol the corrupt lawman has been assembling for Lendina.  That leads to her direct intervention and a big final confrontation between her army and Hutch, David, an unlikely ally and, eventually. Becca at the amusement park, which they’ve tricked up with all sorts of booby traps.  A couple of simultaneous intercut battles occur at the cabin where the Mansell kids are holed up—one between Harry (RZA), who’s turned up with his sword to help, and Lendina’s machete-wielding henchman Kartoush (Daniel Bernhardt), and another in which Brady proves his mettle in hand-to-hand combat.  It all ends with a return to the prologue, which ends in a coda echoing that of the previous movie.

Two elements stand out here.  One is Odenkirk, who demonstrates an ingratiatingly hangdog presence while also switching convincingly into superhuman fight mode.  The other are the action sequences, which are cannily crafted by director Timo Tjahjanto and his team as a blend of goofy excitement and comic brutality.  The picture also benefits from a decent production design by Michael Diner (especially in terms of the park and the crummy motel that’s part of it), solid cinematography by Callan Green, and editing by Elisabet Ronaldsdottir that keeps the action fairly clear while bringing the movie in at a happily brief ninety minutes.  Dominic Lewis’s score does its part, too.

Otherwise, though, the pickings are fairly slim.  Nielsen, Munroe and Cadorath are all pleasant but unremarkable, while except for his hammy facial expressions the physical demands made on Lloyd are minimal—understandable concessions to an octogenarian; RZA gets in some good licks, but Ortiz never seems at ease, and Hanks is pretty much a blank.  The joker in the deck, of course, is Stone, who camps it up mercilessly.  The problems is that her shtick, which extends to a weird Evil Dance, isn’t funny.  The lack of a good villain is really criminal. 

“Nobody 2” will probably satisfy fans of the original, and undiscriminating devotees of the comic action genre.  But it suffers from sequelitis, and the closing suggestion that a further installment might come in the form of a Mr. and Mrs. Spy Couple rethink is not an especially promising tack.