THE VIEWING GUIDE
Nobody
IF ILYA NAISHULLER’S Nobody, in which Bob Odenkirk does a complete 180 from playing Saul Goodman on Better Call Saul to play a lean, mean killing machine out for revenge, comes on like John Wick’s crazy, hyper-caffeinated cousin, it’s not by chance. The movie shares a writer (Derek Kolstad), producer (David Leitch) and stunt team (the insanely tough maniacs at 87North) with the John Wick franchise, but has a sardonic, absurdist brand of black humour that sets it apart from other entries in the geriaction sub-genre. It may be the freshest, funniest action movie in ages, and we’d be very happy to see Odenkirk, once he’s recovered from his real-life heart attack, saddle up again as ‘nobody’ Hutch Mansell. We spoke to the director about the key moments in his demented movie.
HELLO, NOBODY
Starting a movie in media res before rewinding time to show how we got to this point is all the rage these days. But Naishuller’s hectic, hilarious film has one of the more intriguing opening sequences in a while: Bob Odenkirk, bruised and battered, smoking stoically in a police interrogation room, calmly producing a can of cat food, and then an actual cat, from inside his jacket pocket, prompting a baffled cop to exclaim, “Who the fuck are you?” Which is exactly the question the director and Kolstad wanted people to ask. “That was there from the very early draft,” Naishuller tells Empire.