Nobody 2 (4K UHD Review)
Director
Timo TjahjantoRelease Date(s)
2025 (October 7, 2025)Studio(s)
87North/Odenkirk Provissiero (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: C+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: D+
Review
Nobody came out of nowhere in 2021, an intentionally brutal, hard-hitting action film starring... Saul Goodman? Bob Odenkirk was no one’s idea of an action hero prior to that point, but he did his homework, training like a madman in order to be able to deliver some impressive ass-kicking. The whole project was his baby, inspired by his own family’s experience with a home invasion where he wondered how things could have gone differently if he’d been someone else. So, he became someone else, a former clandestine operative named Hutch Mansell, and the rest became history. Odenkirk served as a producer on the project, enlisting John Wick co-director David Leitch to act as co-producer, John Wick writer Derek Kolstad to come up with a screenplay, and Hardcore Henry director Ilya Naishuller to direct. The results didn’t exactly light up the box office, but the limited budget meant that it still managed to turn a tidy profit, making a sequel perhaps inevitable. Yet therein lies a problem.
While John Wick has spawned a seemingly endless series of sequels and spinoffs, there’s at least some slight justification for that in terms of the narrative. The first film hinted at a broader mythology that was worth exploring, although as the sequels have progressed, that mythos has tended to overwhelm the narratives. Nobody raised plenty of questions regarding Hutch’s rather nebulous background, so there may have been reason to delve into that, but there’s a crucial difference between the characters of John Wick and Hutch Mansell. Wick was a former hitperson who desperately wanted to leave the life but was reluctantly dragged back in. The sequels have continued his quest to get back out again, with justifiable motivation for doing so. That’s just not the case with Hutch.
The genius of the original Nobody was that Hutch was a former operative forced to live a normal, suburban life, and he hated every minute of it. He didn’t want to get out; he desperately wanted to get back in and was willing to do damned near anything to make that happen. He was an addict, pure and simple, who needed his fix of the old ultra-violence. Hutch wasn’t really heroic; he was barely even anti-heroic. That added some interesting layers to the film (intentional or not) that called into question our own enjoyment of violent entertainment. By the end of the film, Hutch had one foot back in his old milieu, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing for him or his family. Everything was left on a somewhat ambiguous note that didn’t offer as clear a path for a sequel as John Wick did.
The solution, for good or for ill, was to send Hutch and his family on vacation. Kolstad returned to write the script, joined this time by Aaron Rabin, and their story has Hutch dealing with the aftermath of some of his poor life choices in Nobody. His debts to the Russian mafia have been paid off, but now he’s in debt to The Barber (Colin Salmon) instead and is being forced to work clandestine jobs on the side. That has caused some personal strain with his wife Becca (Connie Nielson), so he decides to take a break—although as The Barber warns him, “This job is in your nature, and nature always wins. Wherever you go, there you are.”
Hutch decides to go to a decrepit old waterpark named Plummerville, mostly due to childhood memories of having gone there with his father (Christopher Llloyd) and brother (the RZA). His family (Nielson, Gage Monroe, and Paisley Cadorath) aren’t particularly thrilled, but they decide to humor him. Unfortunately, Hutch’s nature is Hutch’s nature, and he quickly finds himself afoul of the corrupt local Sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks) and the equally corrupt waterpark owner Wyatt (John Ortiz). Worse, since de-escalation isn’t in Hutch’s vocabulary, he ends up incurring the wrath of criminal boss Lendina (Sharon Stone). To get out of Plummerville alive, Hutch and his entire extended family will be forced to work together using all of their own unique skillsets.
If some of that sounds like a stretch, welcome to Nobody 2. The first film wasn’t exactly realistic, but it maintained enough superficial verisimilitude to make Hutch’s journey plausible enough—well, at least until the ending took things fully over-the-top, but still. Nobody 2, on the other hand, is over-the-top from beginning to end, doubling down on all of the action and even tripling down for the Rube Goldberg climax. Hutch’s burst of violence made sense in the context of the original story, but they’re more of a stretch here. The action is still handled competently, although it does rely a bit more on cutting than it did in the first film. Ilya Naishuller didn’t return this time around, but Indonesian action filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto took over for him, and Tjahjanto certainly knows how to give fight sequences some impact. Things just get far too ridiculous way too quickly.
Which is a shame, because there are still some interesting ideas in Nobody 2 that tend to get overwhelmed by the preposterous action scenes. Hutch’s two main issues in life (well, aside from the whole addition to ultra-violence thing) are that he’s being forced to work off a bad debt by doing things that he doesn’t want to do, and that his work on the side is causing strain in his family life. Yet one of the villains is struggling with the exact same issues, forming a connection between the two of them that they don’t fully recognize at first. Hutch’s relationship with this character is one of the most interesting elements in the film, but it’s ultimately just a minor texture compared to the in-your-face nature of the action. Still, similar to the first film, Nobody 2 runs an admirably brief 89 minutes, so it never wears out its welcome. (Seriously, folks, action films just don’t need to be as bloated as the John Wick sequels have become.) As sequels go, it wasn’t necessary, and yet it’s an entertaining enough way to spend 89 minutes.
Cinematographer Callan Green captured Nobody 2 digitally (in ARRIRAW format) using Arri Alexa 35 cameras with anamorphic Panavision T-series lenses. Post-production work was completed as a 4K Digital Intermediate, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release (this version his graded for High Dynamic Range in Dolby Vison and HDR10). The image is as sharp and detailed as you could hope for a native 4K DI, with textures like skin, costuming, and hair (especially facial stubble) all resolved perfectly. Green told British Cinematographer that he wanted to create a contrast with the first film, “summer instead of winter, mischief instead of menace—but still grounded in grit.” As a result, the color palette in Nobody 2 is much richer, with brilliant splashes of color at the Plummerville playground. It’s all vivid in 4K with HDR, much more so than in the original Nobody, but it suits the film tonally. The only downside is that the contrast range is sometimes lacking in the low-light shots, with washed out shadow detail, but that appears to be how they were captured. But despite being “grounded in grit,” there’s not much issue with noise, even in the darkest shots.
Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos. It’s a lively mix designed to draw viewers into the chaotic environments in the film. While it’s not necessarily the most immersive during the quietest moments, everything springs to life once Hutch stars raining destruction on Plummerville. There are still some relatively subtle uses of the overhead channels, like when Hutch’s son is shooting hoops at the arcade, but it’s the action scenes that open up the soundstage the most. There’s plenty of dynamics, too, with viewers feeling the impact from every punch, kick, gunshot, and explosion. That includes a nice quantity of deep bass, which adds kick to the explosions as well as drive to the score by Dominic Lewis and the various pieces of source music. It’s not quite reference quality, but it’ll do. Additional audio options include Spanish and French 7.1 Dolby Digital. Subtitle options include English SDH, Spanish, and French.
The Universal Pictures 4K Ultra HD release of Nobody 2 is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. There’s also a slipcover that duplicates the artwork on the insert, as well as a Digital code on a paper insert tucked inside. The following extras are included on both discs in HD:
- Deleted Scenes:
- Plummerville (1:45)
- Strictly Family (2:06)
- Kiss (:28)
- Time Machine (1:45)
- Creamy Floater (:45)
- Prep Funhouse (:31)
- Need Another Vacation (:27)
- Returning the Cat (:41)
- Nobody 2: The Fight Continues (11:28)
- Nobody Does Stunts Like Us (12:26)
The extras are limited to a few deleted scenes and a couple of EPK style featurettes. The deleted scenes include a full uncut version of the Plummerville commercial, plus various trims like one that explains exactly why the waterpark was closed. There’s a running subplot through a few of them that explains what happened to the Mansell cat while they were on vacation, and an alternate version of Becca’s final line. The featurettes include interviews with Bob Odenkirk, Sharon Stone, Connie Nielson, Colin Hanks, the RZA, Christopher Lloyd, Gage Monroe, John Ortiz, David Leitch, Timo Tjahjanto, actor/fight coordinator Daniel Bernhardt, stunt coordinator Greg Rementer, and more. Nobody 2: The Fight Continues covers the conception and production of the sequel, with thoughts about the differences in style and tone compared to the first one—including what Stone brought to the film. Nobody Does Stunts Like Us focuses on fight and action choreography, including the training that was involved.
That’s slim pickings as far as extras go, but the video and audio quality of Nobody 2 is pretty impressive in 4K Ultra HD, making this a worthy purchase for fans of the franchise. Whether or not it ever should have become a franchise in the first place is a fair question, but it’s still worth a look as long as you’re willing to overlook some leaps of logic and questionable thematic shifts. The action is still there, and while it’s not as memorable as in the original Nobody, it’s good enough to justify 89 minutes of your time.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).