A Spec Ops Veteran’s Past Catches Up with Him in ‘Nobody’

Bob Odenkirk surprises as a special ops veteran who’s trying to live a quiet, anonymous life in the new action movie “Nobody,” now playing in theaters.

It’s a movie, so that quiet life is going to come unraveled, and we’re destined to meet the ferocious warrior who’s been in hiding for well over a decade. Circumstances force a switch to flip inside Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell, unleashing a world of fury on mobsters the government has been unwilling or unable to contain.

The script was penned by Derek Kolstad, creator of “John Wick’’ and screenwriter for the first three movies in the series. The director is the phenomenally gifted Ilya Naishuller, whose previous feature “Hardcore Henry” suggested new perspectives on the tired action-picture genre.

Related: Reinventing the Action Movie in 'Hardcore Henry'

There’s no doubt Naishuller was offered the opportunity to use his gifts to give an old guy like Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone one more shot at a credible action franchise. Instead, he paired with comedian-turned-dramatic actor Bob Odenkirk and used the acting chops Bob displays in “Better Call Saul” to create a new kind of action hero.

As readers of former SEAL Stew Smith’s excellent Military.com fitness column already know, real-life operators aren’t necessarily the muscleheads we see in the movies. The most important skills are awareness, tenacity and a level of balanced fitness that allows a warrior to adapt to any situation.

Odenkirk embodies the fit-but-not-swole ideal and could pass for an actual middle-aged operator. At the movie’s beginning, he’s raising a family with wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and keeping the books at his father-in-law’s machine shop. No one except his wife knows his past, and no one takes Hutch seriously.

The quiet life implodes when his family falls victim to a home invasion, and Hutch chooses not to employ his skills in front of children. His son thinks Dad is a wimp, but our operator is prepared to live with that until he discovers that his daughter’s kitty-cat bracelet is missing.

Operator mode kicks in, and he tracks down the robbers. Once he realizes that they’re desperately trying to fund medical care for a sick kick, he walks away after learning they don’t have the bracelet after all.

On the bus ride home, Hutch encounters a drunken group of bros harassing a young woman. After he intervenes and they declare their intention to kick his ass, we meet the true warrior. Hutch unloads his gun and takes out the entire crew in an ace fight scene aboard the bus.

Unfortunately, one of the young thugs dies, and he’s the son of a mobster (Russian star Aleksey Serebryakov, making a big first impression in American movies). That mobster doesn’t much like his son, but he feels compelled to take revenge even though he should be focused on his current responsibilities in protecting a large horde of mob cash.

The only details we get about Hutch’s past are when he admits that he did wetwork for the “three-lettered” agencies of the U.S. government. “I used to be what they call an auditor — the last guy anyone wants to see at their door because it meant you didn’t have long to live,” he admits at one point.

We know he learned those skills while in the military, because a grizzled old veteran glimpses a playing-card tattoo on Hutch’s wrist, says “thank you for your service” and promptly locks himself behind a steel door.

Hutch also has an adopted brother (RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan) and a retired FBI-agent father (Christopher Lloyd). The entire family has some serious operator skills that fuel an epic showdown at the movie’s end.

“Nobody” is not realistic and not particularly concerned with the issues facing the operator community in particular or veterans in general. It’s a movie that fuels the fantasies of all middle-aged veterans who believe that they still have the skills needed to operate at the tip of the spear.

What you’ve got here is a total blast of a movie with plenty of mayhem and a strong self-awareness of how absurd its story can be. The bonus is that everyone plays it pretty much straight, so they let the ridiculousness speak for itself with zero nudge-wink bits that ruin the humor by drawing too much attention to the joke.

Naishuller should be up to make whatever movies he wants after this one, and Odenkirk probably can steal Liam Neeson’s “particular set of skills” crown if he wants to make more of these. With theaters reopening around the country, “Nobody” is a great welcome back.

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