Tag: action

Film review: Nobody

Picked this up on Sky for the eye-watering sum of £13.99 (rental!) are my friends kept raving about it. Was it worth it? …
It’s the same fella who wrote John Wick, and it shows. We’ve got the same slow start, then about twenty minutes in, the movie finds its pace and its pretty much non-stop knives and bullets until the final showdown, when it really lets loose.

So, here’s the upshot: Hutch Mansell (brilliantly played by Bob Odenkirk) lives a somewhat mundane life as a book-keeper for his father-in-law’s manufacturing business. The aforementioned mundane life takes a turn for sadistic when Hutch’s house is burgled and he slowly unravels, bringing to bear the skills from his former profession: clean-up specialist for the CIA.

Needless to say, if you love John Wick then you’ll get along with Nobody, just fine. Thinking about, I think I preferred Nobody; it has a raw, visceral quality about, whereas John Wick was more stylised.

Definitely worth the £13.99 (rental!) sticker fee if you’re really into this sort of thing.

Deadpool 2

This was always going to be a chancer, but Ryan Reynolds and co. have managed to pull it off … but only just.

First, the good: the film is funny. It’s very funny. Not as funny as the first one, but still gets a few good laughs through a two hour stretch that could have done with being a little more pacey in places. Reynolds relies a lot on breaking the fourth wall to keep the smirks coming, but I think the trick doesn’t work quite as well as it did in the first outing.

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And the film is good. Well … when I say good, I mean that it knocks the spots off anything the DC Universe has produced to date, but when compared with the rest of the Marvel/Sony collection, I’d say its sailing near the lower-middle of the pack.

Okay, Ryan Reynolds was obviously born to play Deadpool and Josh Brolin turned in a creditable performance as Cable, though it was probably a little more intense than I was expecting. Zazie Beetz (no, I have no idea who she is) was really good as Domino, which again was something of a surprise because I’m assuming this isn’t her day job.

The script was okay, but it lacked the relaxed, anarchic feel of the first outing. I got the impression that writers were out to prove that the phenomenal success Deadpool 1 wasn’t a fluke, and as a result they ended up trying too hard. Some of the humour seemed forced, and some of the sequences leading up to the joke were a little contrived. The plot bounced all over the place, occasionally flying off on blind tangents,just about holding the story together, but not always keeping the audience interested.

A nod to the action sequences though: some of the best fight scenes I’ve seen on screen; just a pity there weren’t more of them.

If you’re a fan and you liked the first one, then definitely see the sequel. If you’re kind of on the fence about the whole Deadpool thing then you might be a little disappointed. It’s a good movie; I just expected better.

Six out of ten.