BEFORE: I loaded up my chain a bit too heavy, it's kind of what I tend to do - but I can still make it to Father's Day on time, all I have to do is drop some of the "middle" films from the groupings that feature the same actor, it's as simple as that. One's a bit too romance-like, and the other's a bit too horror-like, so it's easy enough to table those and save them for February and October, respectively. Speaking of October, I now have a rough plan for this year's horror chain - actually I have TWO plans, I went through the cast lists last night and came up with the two longest chains that will clear some horror films off the list. One is 22 or 23 films long and clears off some movies that have been on the list for a LONG time, the other is 18 films long. I'm leaning toward the first one, although right now I don't know about my employment status or vacation plans, plus there's always New York Comic-Con, so you never know, maybe I should go with the shorter one. But if I need a full month, the 22-film chain could easily be expanded by tacking on a couple more films at the end, AND I think I can get there via an animated film already on the list, but all that needs to be worked out later. The good news is that I have a potential starting point for October, and I should have ample slots to get there when my current plans run out in mid-July. I'll just need to count the slots left in 2023 before then, fill in the gap, and then leave 20 or so slots for November and December, then this year's plan will be complete. And if I have another "perfect year" that will be five in a row, I think.
Christopher Lloyd carries over from "The Tender Bar".
THE PLOT: A docile family man slowly reveals his true character after his house gets burgled by two petty thieves, which, coincidentally, leads him into a bloody war with a Russian crime boss.
AFTER: Here we go, another film about a father - and after tonight, just five more films until Father's Day weekend. I think this might be the easiest programming I do all year, because fathers are everywhere in movies - my only real candidates this time were "The Tender Bar" and the two films I'll be reviewing this coming Saturday and Sunday, I figured if I could knock those three off the list that would be enough of a nod to the holiday - everything else, like "School Ties" and "Senior Year" and "Top Gun: Maverick", "Apollo 10 1/2", "Bullet Train" and "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again" have been happy accidents. Oh, and I had father-centric films that I couldn't even link to this year, like "I Love My Dad", "One More Time", "Imagine That", "As They Made Us" and "Dick Johnson Is Dead" - well, there's always next year.
This is one of those ultra-violent films where the protagonist turns out to be a highly-skilled fighter and shooter (also explosives expert and keen strategist) - the kind of guy who can "read the room" very quickly and size up his opponents even faster, then use the location and found items to take those opponents down. You know, the kind of guy that will grab one opponent and while knocking him senseless, also re-direct that opponent's gun to shoot two more of his enemies. I haven't seen one of these in a while, I passed on the opportunity to watch "John Wick 4" because it just didn't fit in with my chain.
But when we first meet Hutch Mansell, he's a corporate drone at his father-in-law's company, which seems to be some kind of metal fabrication shop, only he's stuck in the invoicing department, and a montage shows us that because he's stuck in a routine, the days and the weeks keep flying by, with only slight variations each day. Wake up, take a shower, get some coffee, make breakfast for the kids, go for a run, zone out at the office for 8 hours, get another workout in, fall asleep next to his wife who's got a permanent "pillow wall" separating them. Repeat.
Hutch had a secret life before, which only his wife seems to know about - and the mysterious voice that comes from Hutch's radio seems to be aware of it also. (The only question, is that voice coming from a real person, or is it just in Hutch's head?). But when two robbers break in to his house late one night, Hutch seems like he could take the thieves down with a golf club - only he doesn't - he holds back. The police later ask him why he didn't even take a swing, but perhaps Hutch was thinking about his family, and instead was just interested in de-escalating the situation. However, when he finds that the thieves not only took his watch but also his daughter's "kitty bracelet", well, then the gloves are off. He tracks one of the thieves down by her tattoo, pretending to be an FBI agent with a (fake?) badge - and then when he finds them, and gets his watch back, the thieves don't know anything about the bracelet.
He leaves them be - but now he's got all this pent-up energy that needs a place to go - so when he sees a group of five drunk goons harassing a woman on a bus, he lets his talents out, and he does seem to have a lot of talents, from knives to martial arts to being able to TAKE a punch, which is perhaps a skill in itself. It takes some effort on his part, as it should, but he manages to mess these five guys up pretty bad - how was he to know that one of them would turn out to be the younger brother of a Russian crimelord?
And so this sets up the conflict for the rest of the movie, with Hutch's irresistible force bumping up against a big Russian immovable object. Neither one will back down, so they have to play for keeps. When Yulian, the Russian, had his assistant research Hutch, whatever they found shocked them so bad that they quit on the spot. This should have been a tip-off to leave this guy alone, but Yulian just couldn't do that. So Hutch is forced to send his wife and kids on a road trip to anywhere and reveal that he used to be the guy who kept rogue government agents in line. He was an assassin known as "The Auditor" but I guess that's not catchy enough for a movie title. He dropped out of that line of work and tried to be normal, with a family and a dead-end job and it seems like maybe he was happy, for a time. But I bet deep down there was a part of him that missed the action...
Anyway, the Russian sends his best men after Hutch, and Hutch takes them all down with the resources he has on hand, or he finds in the room, or the car trunk. It's all very flippin' cool, except for the fact that we're not supposed to be encouraging violence in these woke times. But hey, when you can put together a movie that's as cool as "John Wick" meets "Taken" meets "Baby Driver" and you can do all these cool jaw-dropping stunts and still make it believable, well, you might as well have at it and we'll worry about the effect on society later, I guess.
Hutch probably could take down this crime-lord/oligarch on his own, but he's got some help, like his father who's in a nursing home - but he's still pretty spry and he's a veteran with a vast knowledge of weapons, too - and Harry, the voice from the radio who turns out to be another live former agent who was only pretending to be dead. We really need a sequel now, or a prequel maybe, to explain who Harry is, what his relationship is to Hutch, and how he came to be in hiding. You know, something like "Better Call Saul", but for this. Call it "Nobody 2: Still Nobody", I don't care, but please, somebody get working on this.
NITPICK POINT: Hutch is seen using an NYC transit Metrocard - but nothing looked like New York City to me, and if he lived in the suburbs north of the city or in New Jersey, then he probably wouldn't commute by bus, and even if he did, that bus probably wouldn't take a Metrocard. So I checked the filming locations, and found out this was shot in Manitoba. By itself this doesn't classify as an error, but the fact that suburban buses around NYC wouldn't accept the Metrocard kind of is.
Also starring Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Aleksei Serebryakov, Connie Nielsen (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Michael Ironside (last seen in "The Machinist"), Colin Salmon (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), RZA (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Billy MacLellan, Araya Mengesha, Gage Munroe (last seen in "The Shack"), Paisley Cadorath, Aleksandr Pal (last seen in "Hardcore Henry"), Ilya Naishuller (ditto), Darya Charusha, (ditto), Humberly Gonzalez (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Edsson Morales (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), JP Manoux (last heard in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Adrian McLean, Sergey Shnurov, Joanne Rodriguez, Stephanie Sy (last seen in "Flag Day"), Megan Best (ditto), Adam Hurtig (ditto), Gabriel Daniels (ditto), Neil Davison, Paul Essiembre (last seen in "The Ice Road"), Kristen Harris, Erik Athavale, Neven Pajkic, Stephen Eric McIntyre (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Rick Dobran, Dennis Scullard.
RATING: 7 out of 10 pull-ups at the bus stop
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