Bob Odenkirk's assassin sequel 'Nobody 2' fails to hit the mark

The workaholic assassin Hutch Mansell is in a funk as "Nobody 2" opens. He's sick of the daily grind, by which we mean he spends hours a day grinding people's skulls into mush. What about a family vacation? “You need to have happy memories,” he tells his wife and kids. Unfortunately, no one in the theatre will have a happy memory — or maybe even recall that they saw this C-level offering — by the time it’s over, mercifully after less than 90 minutes. The movie opens in theatres on Friday, Bob Odenkirk makes another awkward stab as an assassin-turned-nice-guy in a sequel that still isn’t funny or stylish enough to be anything but "John Wick Lite.” Is it a send-up? A riff? A new lane?

- Associated Press

In a departure from this summer dominated by insanely larger-than-it-needs-to-be sequels — like “M3GAN 2.0” and “The Bad Guys 2” — “Nobody 2” concentrates not on global destruction but at a threadbare amusement park, Plummerville. (Christopher Plummer’s estate really should sue.) Odenkirk’s Hutch thinks he can reconnect with his doubtful kids and frustrated wife (a dutiful Connie Nielsen) by going to the same place he had so much fun when he was a young lad. But there, they accidentally uncover a corrupt town, a police force led by an unconvincing baddie in Colin Hanks and a deeply evil criminal syndicate. Time to get killing again, kids.