Nobody

The starting point of Ilya Naishuller’s film was not a writers’ room but Bob Odenkirk’s own house. His Los Angeles home was broken into twice, and one night stayed with him. He reached for a baseball bat; in the film Hutch reaches for a golf club. He has said he told himself and the police a thousand times that he did the right thing, that it still does not feel that way, and that viewers will not register the autobiography in it. He has also described a gun held to his head at two in the morning in Chicago, and handing over all his cash. He took the idea to John Wick writer Derek Kolstad, and produced the film. Odenkirk went through a long preparation at the John Wick stunt team’s gym and refused to bulk up; he did not want to look like a superhero. The decision shows: Hutch never establishes dominance, he advances by absorbing punishment, and the bus sequence reads as attrition rather than mastery. The opening of these ninety one minutes runs on repetition, stretching one day until the burglary lands as a break in the loop. A good fit if you want damage taken rather than blows landed. Not for you if that repeating montage and the long build to the bus will drag.