Nobody 2 | Film Review

Written By Ian Maisel

Released August 15, 2025

Bob Odenkirk Punches Logic in the Face (and Wins)

If you’re craving a movie that skips the Oscar speeches and goes straight for the jaw, Nobody 2 delivers a knockout. Bob Odenkirk returns as your friendly suburban neighbor who just happens to fight like an MMA champ with Rambo’s marksmanship. He’s living in cul-de-sacs by day, cracking skulls for gangsters by night, and somehow emerges from every fight against twenty armed men without so much as a paper cut.

It’s gloriously over the top, unapologetically cartoonish, and refreshingly honest about what it is: a rock’em, sock’em summer action flick that doesn’t waste your time pretending to be deep. The sound editing makes every punch pop like a gunshot, the pacing is brisk, and the characters are light enough to float away on the popcorn smell. Think “what you wish most superhero movies would be,” fun, fast, and not weighed down with existential crises.

The moment Christopher Lloyd shows up as Grandpa, you know realism has been vaporized. Then Sharon Stone struts in as a casino-owning, psychopathic villain straight out of Casino fan fiction, and the movie rockets into pure B-movie heaven. The RZA swings by, literally, to slice a bad guy’s head in half with a Wu-Tang-worthy sword fight, because why not? Even the casting of Odenkirk’s kids, who look absolutely nothing like him, feels like an inside joke.

The grand finale? A booby-trapped 1970s amusement park turned into a murder funhouse, rigged up First Blood style. Explosions, one-liners, and zero concern for reality.

Nobody 2 is basically a love letter to the ridiculous action movies of the 1980s: loud, absurd, and utterly entertaining. Recommended for anyone who wants to switch their brain to airplane mode and just enjoy the ride.

Ian Maisel

When I was in high school I worked as a movie theater projectionist, acted in my school plays, and published a series of autobiographical comic books that I sold at music and bookstores. I’ve always loved entertainment, and at Brown University I double majored in Visual Arts and Modern European History because the history teachers told the best stories.

My career began at an artificial intelligence startup company where I worked as a graphic designer and animator creating 3D avatars for virtual personalities. I used a program called Poser that was kind of like a Barbie Dream House for cartoons. My comic illustrations were published in the international edition of Time magazine.

In 2006, I completed a graduate Certificate of Publishing and Communications at Harvard University, where I studied creative writing, acting, and media production. I auditioned for the student theater and was cast in a high-brow Chekhov play and a low-brow undergraduate comedy where I played a California high school guitarist like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

At Boston College I continued developing my career as a graphic designer and went on to work as an animator at a Jewish nonprofit. In 2008 I left Boston to chase the California dream. I got a job in San Francisco as a litigation graphics specialist for intellectual property attorneys, and I worked on some high-stakes legal trials where I barely slept for a week!

After five years I transitioned into the corporate world and worked as a contract presentation designer at Visa and Bare Minerals. I enjoyed collaborating with senior executives to bring their ideas to life through graphic storytelling and large-scale event presentations. One of my highlights was getting to opportunity to produce an in-house interview with the supermodel Christy Turlington!

In 2017 I took on my first Senior Designer role at Alexandria Real Estate, where I designed high-end investor presentations and art directed photoshoots for major tech companies including Facebook, Google, and Pinterest. The following year I flew out to LA to study video production, and went on to create a digital signage content management system for Alexandria’s 60+ high-tech office buildings across the country.

In 2020 I expanded my focus into social media by producing a video advertising campaign that launched a Visa executive’s speaking career by generating 30,000 social media engagements in five months. Since then I’ve continued designing creative presentations, producing videos, and writing social media campaigns for a wide range of brands including the University of San Francisco and Meta. I love working with high-performance creative teams on exciting projects and enjoy utilizing my creative background to work at the intersection of design, entertainment, and culture.

https://www.ianmaisel.com
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