After attaining deserved stardom due to his electrifying performances on 'Breaking Bad' and 'Better Call Saul', veteran writer-performer Bob Odenkirk made the move to a feature film starring vehicle. Here he's a ton of fun playing an average working drone named Hutch Mansell, living an ordinary average life. But after his house is robbed, this brings out his long-suppressed action-oriented tendencies. One night, he decides to dispense some punishment to miscreants raising hell on a bus. He ends up killing one of them, and now he's in over his head because this victim was the kid brother of a top Russian mobster (Aleksey Serebryakov). But with a little help from his own dad David (Christopher Lloyd) and the mysterious Harry (RZA), he takes the fight to the multitude of bad guys.
There's no deep thinking needed for a lark like this; overall, this is ideal if you just want a non-stop, fast-paced barrage of violence. As you can surmise, this is not a case of a milquetoast discovering his inner badass after some passage of time; this is a story of a guy who's always been tough but prefers not to show it off. And Odenkirk, who came up with the concept after dealing with a home invasion in his real life, is nicely cast as this unlikely action movie hero. He's not super-human, fortunately; he does take some lumps during that memorable bus sequence. But he's a determined man who refuses to let these scores of creeps intimidate him. The whole supporting cast is great, although Connie Nielsen (as Mrs. Mansell) and Michael Ironside (as his father-in-law) don't get much to do in the finished film. It's just a total hoot seeing Lloyd in one of the unlikeliest roles of *his* career. And Serebryakov is likewise fun as the bad guy, playing him with some nuance and not just menace.
Amusing soundtrack choices, solid fights and chase scenes, and a steady supply of expendable thugs who (mostly) can't hit the broad side of a barn help to make this acceptable over-the-top, patently ridiculous action fare.
As a bonus, this was filmed in my hometown, so I had additional fun spotting familiar locations.
Seven out of 10.
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