Normal Is An Above-Average Action Thriller Saved By Bob Odenkirk
Ben Wheatley elevates a shaky script from John Wick’s Derek Kolstad.
When you get an action film called Normal, you expect a degree of irony to it. And with John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad and Free Fire director Ben Wheatley behind it, you expect that title to be totally ironic. But Normal, starring Bob Odenkirk as a temporary sheriff in a sleepy Minnesota town who suddenly finds himself besieged by its shotgun-toting denizens, is surprisingly average. Well, maybe just above-average, thanks to Odenkirk’s action hero bonafides and Wheatley’s punchy and propulsive direction.
Normal follows Sheriff Ulysses (Odenkirk), a man haunted by a past failure and looking for an easy job to weather his messy divorce. He takes on the role of interim sheriff in Normal, Minnesota, a nondescript Midwestern town that seems like every other economically depressed small town in the country — with a few exceptions. The police armory is filled with military-grade weapons and technology. The mayor’s house is a swanky, billion-dollar mansion. And the town seems to have raised a suspiciously high amount of money for various infrastructure projects.
Ulysses at first passes it off as the typical quirks of a small town, hoping to just keep his head down until the town elects a proper sheriff. But that all goes sideways when two desperate criminals (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) decide to rob the town bank, where they discover that the vault is full of billions of dollars worth of gold bars. When Ulysses attempts to negotiate with the robbers, he’s suddenly attacked by the deputy sheriff. Soon, the whole town is on his tail, with everyone from the elderly knitting goods store lady, to the hot bartender (a wildly underused Lena Headey) brandishing deadly weapons to assassinate the outsiders. Because if they don’t, then the Japanese yakuza will descend on Normal to massacre them all.
It’s quite a ludicrous turn of events, one that feels — intentionally or not — like a straightforward riff on Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz. A culty town that suddenly turns into a battleground for our intrepid protagonist? What’s not to love? But although Normal’s somewhat ludicrous premise teases a movie that will break out of the action-movie mold set by John Wick, it can’t quite escape its shadow.
The fault largely lies in Kolstad, who delivers a shaky script with predictable turns and some real questionable dialogue, including heavy-handed lines like, “I thought this town was normal! It’s not normal.” It’s scenes like this that remind you that John Wick was originally a direct-to-video movie called Scorn — a B-movie that was elevated to a genuine phenomenon thanks to Keanu Reeves’ performance and Chad Stahelski’s radical brand of action filmmaking. Normal is not quite on that level, but director Ben Wheatley thankfully taps into the kind of thrilling filmmaking that he displayed with films like Free Fire and High Rise, and elevates the film beyond the various other John Wick knockoffs.
The snowy atmosphere of Normal adds another level of stakes to the story, and texture to the fight scenes.
The secret to Normal’s success is two-fold: the fights are messy and inelegant, and they are relentless. Wheatley comes from the same school of filmmaking as Wright, and retains the same dry British humor in his action scenes — one tussle with a brawny mailman ends in a giant metal sign coming out of left field to save the day. The film is full of Chekhov’s guns, knives, and bazookas, but Wheatley delights in tossing those out the window in favor of crashing a car through the doors. It’s a film that flirts with a “Rube Goldberg machine” type of action, which helps break up the monotony of typical punch-punch-kick fights.
Perhaps most refreshingly, Odenkirk is not playing a highly skilled assassin or even a moderately skilled fighter. He’s simply a man trying to survive, thrown into unbelievable circumstances. It’s a marked difference from his role in Nobody, the other Kolstad-penned action franchise that he’s headlined, and Odenkirk delights in lending an “aw-shucks” charm to his action hero.
Normal may not totally live up to its absurd premise, or even deliver on the irony that its title promises. But it’s got a handful of fun, creative fight scenes, and some enjoyably slimy supporting performances from Henry Winkler and Headey. And thanks to the combination of Wheatley and Odenkirk, it’s an above-average good time.
