Pun Salad

This looked pretty good to me when it came out a couple of years ago, and it finally showed up on the Freevee streaming service ("Free" with ads, but that's OK). I like Bob Odenkirk, and (as a bonus) Christopher Lloyd plays his dad.

Odenkirk plays Hutch Mansell, an apparent nebbish stuck in a routine job, bookkeeping for a family business. Things change when his home is invaded by a couple of amateurish thugs. Being a nebbish, Hutch lets them escape. But they apparently also took a sentimental keepsake belonging to Hutch's young daughter, a kitty cat bracelet.

This can not stand.

We get hints that there may be more to Hutch than meets the eye when he uses street smarts and measured violence to track down and thwart the thieves. And it's like an awakening to him; on the way home, the bus he's on gets invaded by a gang of obnoxious youths, and in an impressively choreographed sequence, Hutch bests them as well.

Unfortunately, things escalate quickly. One of the gang is the disrespected relation of a Russian mob kingpin. Who proceeds to declare against Hutch and his family.

The movie doesn't take itself very seriously. One of the genres Freevee puts it in: "Comedy". There are a number of cute sight gags.

The latest entry (number six) in Joe Ide's "IQ" series, chronicling the exploits of Isaiah Quintabe and his retinue. Reading the series in order is recommended; there are numerous (N) characters and their relationships (O(N²)) have been developing over the years.

IQ had a pretty offbeat gig going, one that seemed to suit him: an unlicensed private eye to his downscale neighborhood, delivering rough justice to the bilked and downtrodden, paid in tuna casseroles and the like. But he's developed a couple of deadly enemies too: Skip, a professional (and psychotic) hitman; and Manzo, a onetime powerful leader of a drug gang, embarrassed and broke thanks to Isaiah (in a previous book). Both want IQ dead, and he's developed a serious case of PTSD as a result. And things get much worse when Skip abducts IQ's love, Grace, to use as bait in a deadly trap.

Things move along pretty quickly. PTSD-hampered Isaiah comes close to rescuing Grace, but fails. It's a cat-and-mouse game, full of schemes, shifting alliances, drug abuse, and betrayals.