Normal movie review: Bob Odenkirk powers a darkly comic small-town shootout

Derek Kolstad. Bob Odenkirk. Guns. Dynamites. An everyday man in a quaint American town. I am sold already.

After their popular collaboration in the slick common-man-with-a-violent-streak films Nobody and Nobody 2, John Wick’s Kolstad once again drops Odenkirk 2.0 as a normal guy in a small town where everything is trigger-wired for cinematic mayhem. Normal, which has a story written by Kolstad and Odenkirk, is a blood-slick popcorn actioner that offers the gleeful satisfaction of watching those brainrot puzzle videos on YouTube. Everything happens as you expect, and everything feels delightfully normal.

It’s winter in Normal, Minnesota, where Odenkirk’s Ulysses is sent to as an interim Sheriff due to the untimely demise of the town’s reputed Sheriff, Gunderson. Coming from a personal tragedy himself, Ulysses hopes for some quiet and healing in these mundane, icy scapes. As the substitute Sheriff, he has just one goal — to leave the town as he found it. Through the next 90 minutes, we see him do just that — using blood-spurting-on-ice violence, guns and some good old action-movie bravado.

What captures you instantly is the specific atmosphere that writer Kolstad and director Ben Wheatley go for. Normal isn’t just a fictional snow-covered town ironically named — it’s a town where nothing is as it seems, and everything is normal, in a twisted way sort of way (seeing everything in the town named to maintain that charade — Normal Bank, Normal Stores, Normal Sheriff Station — garners easy chuckles).

There are certainly quite a few giveaways, which Ulysses does observe — they have somehow raised $16 million for their town hall, the Sheriff station has an excessively disproportionate armoury, the central diner is adorned with a startling collection of rifles, Gunderson’s death seems urgently brushed under the carpet, and even the friendly-neighbourhood-elderly-Asian-woman surveils police activity through a scanner. Gunderson’s funeral is where Ulysses’ cop-senses tingle; however, like with every other sign, he brushes them off and gives in to the appeal of the small town. Because “life’s a lot easier when you care a little less.”

But of course, the guns in the diner aren’t for decorations, of course, the Asian lady isn’t who she says she is, and of course, the C4 in the armoury isn’t just a passing detail. Normal pulls the pin when two ragtag bank robbers, Lori (Reena Jolly) and Keith (Brendan Fletcher), attempt a heist at the Normal Bank. Ulysses and his troops, consisting of Deputy Mike Nelson (Billy MacLellan) and Deputy Blaine Anderson (Ryan Allen), arrive at the scene. All hell breaks loose.

There’s hardly a moment when Normal takes itself seriously. Every action set piece revels in a hilariously grisly and macabre sense of cinematic violence. The staging feels contrived, sure, but the escalating stakes keep you hooked. A metal signboard dropping on a man is a generic idea, yes, but also somehow very funny. It’s the close-quarter action that makes you lean forward more than the pyrotechnics; punches are inches away, explosions happen merely feet away.

A sequence in the diner with an automatic vinyl turntable makes for such a pleasurable song-and-fight sequence, and watching Odenkirk kick butt with knives, dynamites, pistols, and a grenade launcher is a new normal we are pleased to be in. Surprisingly, Normal allows the actor to lean more towards his comedic stance than the Nobody films — the only major difference is that Wheatley’s film alludes to a deeper character portrait for Odenkirk, though the writing doesn’t really take that detail anywhere novel.

The film does suffer a few bullet holes to its plot. The prologue showing the Yakuza dilutes surprises, and the way it all wraps up feels eerily ironed out. But “life’s a lot easier when you care a little less.“

Normal is currently running in theatres