Tag Archives: Connie Nielsen

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Holiday Road

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Nobody 2

by Hope Madden

Hutch still has trouble getting the trash out on time, but other than that, his life is considerably different than it was four years ago when Nobody turned Bob Odenkirk into an action star and Odenkirk turned the film into the most watchable riff on John Wick ever.

Hutch’s wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) has accepted her husband’s line of work, but that doesn’t make it any easier that he is never home. Where once he was the center of his household, now he watches from the curb, garbage bag in hand, as each member of his family goes their own way without him.

Not today! Nope, Hutch is going to take his family to the very spot that meant so much to him as a kid: Summerville. It’s a water sliding, amusement parking, duck-boat riding Midwest tourist trap where nothing could possibly go wrong.

Unless this is a sequel to a fun “particular set of skills” actioner, which it is, so instead Hutch and his family stumble into a duck-boatload of trouble.

Director Timo Tjahjanto, known mainly for Indonesian folk horror, directs this with a cheery energy that may not match Ilya Naishuller’s original in terms of action, but it does the job.

Odenkirk still cuts a funny figure as an action star, and he makes Hutch’s longing for a nice, normal family feel sad and sweet.

Nielsen continues to impress in an underwritten role, and Sharon Stone lends some fun villainy, although both are hampered by the script. Derek Kolstad, working this time with Aaron Rabin, has no idea how to write women because he is so hyper-focused on the fact that these characters are women. We don’t always have to refer to our gender when we speak. No one needs to call themselves a bitch or a mama bear. It’s just a lazy man (or two) not working very hard to craft actual characters.

Still, supporting work from John Ortiz, RZA and Colin Hanks helps to offset the problem, and the whole she-bang ends in a cheap amusement part, which is undeniably fun.

Plus, who doesn’t want to see Christopher Lloyd with a Tommy gun? Isn’t that what summer is all about?

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Return of the King

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Gladiator II

by Hope Madden

Ridley Scott knows how to stage an epic. At 87, he’s lost none of his flair with massive battles on land or sea, nor with the brutal intimacy of hand-to-hand combat. And he still knows how to cast a movie.

His narrative skills have taken a step back, but his eye has rarely been sharper.

It’s been 24 years since Scott’s Oscar-bedecked Gladiator cemented its position as the best sword-and-sandal film, but in the age of Caesars, only 14 years have passed. Scott opens Gladiator II with a lovely animated sequence honoring the fallen Maximus, as well as many of the filmmaker’s most iconic images.

And then we land on the film’s present-day African coast, a battle with a Roman navy led by Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a nation subdued, and a grieving widower (Paul Mescal) claimed as prisoner of war.

But we know he’s no ordinary prisoner.

For the next 2+ hours, Scott toys with “echoes through eternity” as he undermines much of the rebellious political nature of his original in favor of a returning king parable. That, a few wobbly accents, a couple of narrative dead spots, and a really poor decision involving sharks weaken the sequel.

But a good gladiator can’t be stopped, and Mescal is a really good gladiator. Russell Crow layered righteous rage with tenderness. Mescal replaces that tenderness with a vulnerability that only makes the rage more unruly. A touch of mischievous good humor humanizes the character and compels attention.

As does Denzel Washington. I dare you to take your eyes off him. Vain but wise, calculating and saucy, Washington’s Macrinus proves a much more complicated foe than the original’s wholly dishonorable, incestuous crybaby Commodus. But the simplicity of good v evil clarified Gladiator’s appeal. Macrinus is harder to hate.

Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger supply the syphilitic excess this go-round as twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla. Connie Nielsen returns, regal as ever, though no more skilled at staging coups. The balance of the cast is uniformly solid if not entirely memorable.

Gladiator II delivers an often exhilarating, mainly gorgeous spectacle populated by enigmatic characters performed admirably. It does not live up to Gladiator. But what could?

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Who Are You, Again?

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Nobody

by Hope Madden

On the surface, this film feels really familiar.

Nobody was written by Derek Kolstad, which should surprise, well, nobody. Kolstad wrote 2014’s John Wick. I assume you’ve seen it: a humble widower is moved to reignite his highly trained assassin’s nature when his dog is in jeopardy.

Kolstad’s next project? Acolyte. What’s that about, I wonder? According to imdb: When his wife is kidnapped, a simple man reveals himself to be anything but as he assembles his old crew to rescue her.

Nobody is exactly every other film Kolstad has ever written, and its execution has all the earmarks of director Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry): precise action and a weird song and dance number.

The one and only thing that separates Nobody from dozens and dozens of expertly crafted, wildly interchangeable “underestimated badass” films is the utter brilliance of its casting.

And by that, I mean exclusively the perfection of Bob Odenkirk in this role.

Every beat is the same. The ideal placement of Sixties Soul classics, the meticulously timed car sequences, the underlying daddy issues, and most of all the struggle between the hero’s natural brutality against the unnatural pull of domesticity—all of it second-by-second constructed as you would expect.

Constructed well. Air tight. Shoot out choreography is like ballet—better than anything in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It’s all interchangeable with every other really well made carbon copy.

But god damn, Bob Odenkirk? I’m not saying he makes this a comedy, but his timing is comic perfection. His placement at the center of the film not only sells the “average guy” masquerade better than Liam Neeson ever could, but it makes his inner struggle and his displays of violence actually stand out.

Regardless of the fact that you’ve seen this exact movie a dozen times, you just don’t expect it. It’s great!

He’s great.

Plus Christopher Lloyd?! Yes, please. And Michael Ironside, who is forever welcome in any role. Connie Nielsen, on the other hand, is—characteristic of the genre—grossly wasted as the wife who’d probably love him more if he showed his badass nature more often.

Aleksey Serebryakov also sells the mad Russiah villain pretty well. There are certain scenes—one climactic across-the-table, in particular—where neither lead conveys the gravity of the situation. I’m not asking for Walken/Hopper in True Romance, but this moment is pivotal and needed to feel like it.

Still, Bob F. Odenkirk. Right on.