Nobody

From Death Wish to Taken and numerous examples in between, the ultraviolent adventures of everyday vigilantes are a staple of the action genre. And like its protagonist, Nobody might be relegated to genre anonymity.

This adrenaline-fueled thriller has style and attitude to spare, along with a committed performance by Bob Odenkirk as the bone-crunching, blue-collar hero. Although the pace is lively, the predictable nature of the mayhem blunts the cumulative impact.

Suburban father Hutch (Odenkirk) is mild-mannered to the extreme. While his next-door neighbor gloats about a vintage sports car, Hutch rides the bus each day to his mundane data analysis job.

During a home invasion robbery, when his wife (Connie Nielsen) is endangered and his son (Gage Munroe) is injured, he initially chooses passive resistance over violence. But the perceived emasculation of his actions gnaws away at him, triggering a vengeful rampage that prompts him to channel some unique training from his top-secret past.

During a trip to the nursing home to see his spry father (Christopher Lloyd), Hutch takes a handgun and some ammunition from the closet. “There’s this thing I got to do,” he explains.

It’s not long before Hutch is a riled-up bystander on a parked bus, resourcefully wiping out a rowdy group of thugs with bad intentions concerning a young female passenger.

Unfortunately, that lures him into a showdown with a Russian mobster (Alexey Serebryakov) whose penchant for karaoke hides some serious anger issues, not to mention a deep roster of brawny henchmen.

After his rapid evolution, Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) effortlessly generates not only our rooting interest but our admiration, playing a character equally adept as escaping death and inflicting punishment, even as the body count accumulates.

As directed with visual flair by Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry), the film takes several pages from the Deadpool playbook with less success — including a steady stream of sardonic wisecracks, ironic soundtrack choices, and the creative choreography of its confrontations.

The screenplay by Derek Kolstad (John Wick) almost revels in its silliness and detachment from reality, yet without much underlying satirical edge or social comment. As it turns out, despite some scattered laughs and thrills, Nobody isn’t as ballsy as Hutch.

Rated R, 92 minutes.