Movie Review - Bible Based: Nobody

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

No More Mister Nice Guy

Plot Overview

There was a study done on stress in rats. A rat was wired to receive random shocks. When a second, hapless rat, un-wired, was put in the same cage, the first rat gnawed on the second one to relieve its stress whenever it was zapped. Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is running the rat race but never gets the cheese. He works as a bookkeeper in his father-in-law's steel foundry but is unable to save enough money to buy the plant outright. He does thankless tasks at home, too. His wife is frigid and his son disrespectful. When he lets a couple home invaders go unharmed, the condescending police commend him for his restraint but his neighbor snubs him for being a wimp. He is sublimely complacent in his white bread life; he doesn't need to relieve stress on anybody.

When his precious daughter Abby (Paisley Cadorath) can't find her kitty cat bracelet, Hutch figures the home invaders had nabbed it by mistake and tracks them down through the helpful big city tattoo parlors. But the thieves don't have it. Oh well, he figures, “God doesn't close one door without opening another.” He takes the Metro home, but it gets boarded by five gopniki who bully a young female rider. Novelist Jason Matthews describes their kind:

A gopnik was a male street tough—head shaved, gap-toothed, perpetually slurry eyed and red faced on cans of Jaguar alcoholic energy drink. Invariably dressed in Adidas tracksuits, pointed-toe leather tapochki, and gondonka flat caps, they infested Moscow street corners, bus stops, and city parks, sleeping, drinking, puking, pissing, and mugging passersby. Their byword was bychit, to behave like a bull. They would want her— (70)

An altercation ensues. Hutch arrives home disheveled. He tells his reproachful wife, “You should see the other guys.” They ended up in the hospital. One of them Teddy Kuznetsov (Aleksandr Pal) expires. His brother, Russian racketeer Yulian (Aleksey Serebryakov), doesn't much care for that part of the family, but he's been under a lot of pressure lately and now has found a new rat in the cage to take his stress out on (“Get me every man we have.”)

Ideology

There's a lesson here about strife, found in (Prov. 30:33): “Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.” You take milk that's a liquid and start churning it, around and around, and it changes into a solid, butter. Keep provoking a mild-mannered guy and eventually he'll get angry, i.e. change his quiescent state. In this movie the metaphor is developed early on from Hutch opening a can of cat food. He cranks the opener round and round, and eventually the lid pops open to reveal the content inside. Redundant editing shows his same old, same old life, week after week: Mon.–Tues.–Wed.–Thurs.–Fri. There's no relief in sight, not with marital sex, not with a promotion, not even with an Italy vacation. Eventually, some hidden aspect of his former life will emerge. He muses about his contemporary existence, “Deep down I always knew it was a fraud. It lasted a lot longer than I expected.” It's similar to what Matthews describes in a spy novel:

Could either of them live without the sustaining excitement of this work, the knife-edge bustle of the street, the adrenaline high of stealing secrets from an implacable foe? What would their retired life be like? Would they look at the snowy Rockies from the porch of a log cabin? Or eat breakfast on a white balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay? Or throw another log on the fire in a cozy New England farmhouse? Could either of them survive retirement? Gable always said that spooks dried up and died when they left the Game. (212–13)

The concurrent biblical strife metaphor is, “as the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood.” Wring any other part of the body, the person can shrug it off. Wring his nose, it bleeds. In this movie a late night scrum results in multiple hospitalizations, but one of the losers had his larynx crushed and Hutch must perform an emergency tracheotomy and insert a straw just so the bloke can breathe. The others will survive their breaks and bruises, this one perhaps not. He was wounded in a critical area. Hutch could shrug off all the provocations he was given, but when they brought the fight to his house, he had to take care of business. That was crossing the line.

Production Values

“” (2021) was directed by Russian Ilya Naishuller. It was written by Derek Kolstad of John Wick fame. It stars Bob Odenkirk, Aleksey Serebryakov, and Connie Nielsen. The acting is satisfactory and doesn't upstage the action. A couple token Negroes were included in the cast, but the director being from a country that has no nyigers didn't know how to insert them seamlessly.

MPAA rated it R for strong violence and bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use. It was filmed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It's 1½ hours long. The action was well choreographed. The plot was straightforward. Some lounge music occasionally broke the tension. The editing was masterful.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

This was a well thought-out movie a bit on the dark side; it doesn't balk at graphic violence. It's hard to know what to think of this “Nobody” character, but that's the point now, isn't it? His wife warms up to him at the end, which is as close to a Hollywood ending that we get. See it for the action.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Movie: Nobody

Bible Based Review