Bob Odenkirk proves once again that midlife crises are best handled with heavy artillery and a bad attitude.
Preview
If you have ever driven through a sleepy Midwest hamlet and thought to yourself, “I bet every grandma here is heavily armed and in bed with foreign mobsters,” then Hollywood has finally made a movie for your hyper-specific paranoia. Directed by Ben Wheatley and penned by Derek Kolstad (the guy who gave us John Wick), Normal drops Bob Odenkirk right into the snow-covered middle of nowhere as a bruised sheriff who just wanted a quiet gig to nurse his midlife crisis.
Naturally, peace and quiet last about twelve minutes. When two bumbling drifters try to stick up the local bank, they accidentally bust open the town’s dirty little secret: the entire municipality is moonlighting as an off-shore vault for the Japanese Yakuza.The sweet, churchgoing locals instantly turn into a heavily armed militia determined to slaughter their new lawman to protect their illicit nest egg. Packed with pitch-black comedy, frozen shootouts, and Henry Winkler playing wildly against type, it is a bloody neo-Western designed to test just how much physical trauma one former TV lawyer can endure.
Review by Ben Dover
Listen up, because I am only going to say this once. At sixty years old, I have had to sit on my living room couch and watch Hollywood push out ninety-pound teenagers who can somehow karate-kick three bodybuilders through a brick wall while checking their social media apps. It is complete garbage. So when I see Bob Odenkirk shuffling onto my TV screen looking tired, sore, and like he actually needs to stretch before he bends down to tie his boots, I immediately perk up. Normal is the kind of nasty, mean-spirited little action comedy that remembers what fun looks like before movies became two-hour CGI cartoons for kids who cannot pay attention for ten seconds.
The premise is simple enough for even my dim-witted brother-in-law to follow. Odenkirk plays Ulysses, a guy who takes an interim sheriff job in Normal, Minnesota, expecting to do nothing harder than settle arguments over church parking spaces.Instead, a couple of amateur crooks try to rob the local bank and discover the vault is stuffed to the brim with gold bars, military hardware, and dirty cash belonging to the Yakuza.The moment the townsfolk realize the secret is out, every smiling neighbor in a flannel jacket pulls out an automatic rifle to kill the sheriff.It is basically Hot Fuzz meets Fargo, except nobody is doing cutesy accents just to be charming.
Now, do not get it twisted. I have plenty to complain about because that is my job. The first twenty minutes take their sweet time getting out of first gear with a bunch of artsy, moody silence and an opening bit in Japan that felt like it belonged in a completely different DVD. Director Ben Wheatley clearly thinks he is doing high art at times, lingering on snowdrifts like he is trying to win a European ribbon. Hey pal, we came to watch the Fonz fire a grenade launcher, not stare at pine trees for ten minutes. Pick up the pace!
Once the shooting starts, though, the movie turns into pure, unapologetic mayhem. Odenkirk gets beat to a pulp in realistic fashion. He gets bruised, he loses his breath, and he actually looks like a sixty-year-old man who just fell down the stairs. The dark humor hits hard, especially watching Henry Winkler play a smiling, corrupt mayor who treats international crime like a bake sale fundraiser. It is refreshing to watch a film where people get shot and actually stay down instead of bouncing back up like rubber cartoons.
Is it a masterpiece that will change the world? Absolutely not. It is predictable in spots, some of the side characters are annoying enough to make you root for the bullets, and the third act gets so chaotic you need to turn the lights off to see what is happening in the blizzard. But in a streaming landscape overflowing with sterile superhero nonsense, a tight, nasty, blood-soaked winter shootout is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Who Stars in the Movie
- Bob Odenkirk (Sheriff Ulysses):Plays the world-weary interim sheriff.He plays a guy who is tired of living, tired of fighting, and tired of getting shot at, which is basically my exact mood every morning when I open my property tax bill.
- Henry Winkler (Mayor Kibner): The sweet old mayor who is secretly running a town-wide money laundering racket. Seeing the guy who played the Fonz casually talking about criminal syndicates is worth the rental fee alone.
- Lena Headey (Moira): The local bartender who seems like the only sane adult in town until the bullets start flying and her real motives show up.
- Jess McLeod (Alex Gunderson):The troubled kid of the previous sheriff who ends up in the drunk tank and later has to help Ulysses survive the town siege.
- Brendan Fletcher (Keith) & Reena Jolly (Lori): The world’s most incompetent couple who trigger the entire bloodbath by trying to rob the worst bank in North America.
- Billy MacLellan & Ryan Allen (Deputies Mike and Blaine): The two crooked local deputies who fold on their duty the second their illicit town retirement fund is threatened.
Special Effects and Music
- Special Effects:Refreshingly practical and bloody. When someone takes a shotgun blast or a stray grenade, it looks messy, painful, and squishy rather than like a video game screen. The practical muzzle flashes and blizzard effects make the town feel genuinely freezing and hostile.
- Music: The score relies on tense, atmospheric Midwestern dread paired with sharp percussive hits during the shootouts. It does not blast obnoxious modern club noise in your ears, for which my tinnitus is deeply grateful.
Rating
4 out of 5 Stars
A delightfully nasty, snow-covered neo-Western that proves old guys with bad backs can still kick tail when pushed into a corner.
Complete Synopsis and Plot Breakdown
Sheriff Ulysses takes on the role of interim sheriff in the isolated, quiet town of Normal, Minnesota, looking for a temporary gig to escape past professional baggage and personal regrets.The town seems idyllic and sleepy, filled with polite locals, an eccentric mayor named Kibner, and a local tavern run by a bartender named Moira.However, Ulysses begins noticing oddities about the sudden death of the previous sheriff, eventually locking up the late sheriff’s distraught, intoxicated kid, Alex, to sleep it off in the holding cell.
The calm is shattered when two amateur out-of-town drifters, Lori and Keith, attempt to rob the local bank.When Ulysses intervenes, the local deputies arrive and unexpectedly open fire into the bank with heavy military grade weaponry, demonstrating no concern for civilian hostages.Taking cover in the vault with the robbers, Ulysses discovers the bank is holding millions in illicit cash, gold bars, and high-caliber armaments.
Mayor Kibner contacts Ulysses via telephone to explain the town’s grim reality: the entire community has entered into a lucrative contract with a Japanese Yakuza syndicate to securely store their assets in exchange for enormous kickbacks that keep the town wealthy.Because the secret has been breached, the townspeople and deputies are instructed to execute everyone inside the bank.
A full-scale siege breaks out during an escalating winter blizzard. Ulysses, Keith, and Lori fight their way through the deputies, accidentally killing the mayor with a grenade launcher during the firefight.Battling through streets filled with heavily armed townsfolk, Ulysses manages to help Lori and Keith escape the town borders in a fortified snowplow.
Returning to the station, Ulysses is ambushed by Moira, who reveals she murdered the previous sheriff because he threatened to break the town’s syndicate contract.Before Moira can execute Ulysses, Alex breaks out and kills Moira, avenging their father. When the Yakuza representatives arrive in town, Ulysses and the surviving locals stage the scene to make it appear as an outside robbery attempt that was successfully repelled, keeping the syndicate’s assets intact. During the tense celebratory dinner that follows, a poorly secured shotgun on the wall accidentally discharges, instantly killing the Yakuza boss and leaving the town’s future in absurd chaos.
5 Famous Quotes from the Movie
- “I took this job because I was told nothing ever happens here.”
- “In Normal, we take care of our own, sheriff. And our own pays very well.”
- “You are trying to rob a bank that has more firepower in the basement than the National Guard.”
- “It is not corruption if everyone in town voted for it.”
- “Do not shoot the snowplow, that is city property!”
5 Notes and Interesting Facts
- Reuniting the Nobody Duo:The project originated during the production of Nobody (2021), where writer Derek Kolstad and star Bob Odenkirk brainstormed a story that blended gritty action with classic Hitchcockian small-town paranoia.
- Inverted High Noon:Director Ben Wheatley described the core concept of the movie as an inverted High Noon: instead of a sheriff trying to rally cowardly townspeople to fight outlaws, the entire town is the outlaw mob trying to kill the lone sheriff.
- The Title Change:The script was originally developed under the working title The Interim before being renamed Normal to emphasize the ironic contrast of the seemingly wholesome Minnesota setting.
- Winkler’s Villainous Turn: The role of Mayor Kibner was written specifically to subvert Henry Winkler’s beloved, gentle public persona by turning him into a cheerfully ruthless racketeer.
- Real-Life Aging Action Hero: Bob Odenkirk intentionally performed his stunt scenes to look physically exhausted and beaten down, rejecting modern superhero agility in favor of a realistic sixty-something brawler who feels every punch.
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