Last week I asked Mrs. Vern if she’d want to see the new Bob Odenkirk action movie from the same writer as JOHN WICK and NOBODY. She loves both of those movies as much as I do (and Odenkirk going back to the Mr. Show days) so of course she did. Then on Saturday, as we were getting ready to go, she asked “What is this movie called, by the way?” I guess I’d sold her on it pretty much the same way I would a new Jason Statham – just the new Bob Odenkirk action movie. I hope he does another one and the poster says “ODENKIRK” at the top in giant letters.
NORMAL opens in Osaka, with a great Japanese cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and a group of Yakuza atoning for some type of failure by cutting off a pinky and accepting a new job. The job sends them to some small American town called Normal, Minnesota.
Odenkirk does not play one of the Yakuza. He plays Ulysses Richardson, also a fuckup arriving in Normal for a shit job, though in narration he tries to sell it to us as a pretty good one. He’s the interim sheriff, because the old one died, so he’s there to stamp forms and maintain the status quo for the five weeks until the election. He’s playing dumb a little, though. He acts like there’s nothing suspicious, but we see his eyebrows raising at various red flags. We even see him looking at the sheriff’s death certificate and later quizzing the guy who signed it. I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Don’t worry about it.
We’re told the population is 1,800, but it sure seems like less. The story sticks to a little strip of beloved local businesses including a diner (of course), a hardware store, a sewing supply shop, and a movie theater (I wasn’t able to read the marquee). Ulysses notes that they don’t seem to have the same money troubles as most towns like this. They have a $1.8 million city hall under construction, the sheriff lived in “the Big Mac of McMansions,” his deputy Mike (Billy MacLellan, also in NOBODY) is shopping for a motorcycle.
We can put two and two together, we know it has to do with our friends in Osaka, who it will turn out are using Normal’s bank vault as an offshore account and giving everyone a percentage. Which Ulysses would never have to know about if not for other out-of-towners, Lori (Reena Jolly, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER) and Keith (Brendan Fletcher, FREDDY VS. JASON), a desperate young couple who decide to stick up the bank. They don’t plan to hurt anyone, and freak out when they seem to have caused a guy to have a heart attack. Meanwhile, we see the pinky bandages on the two Japanese employees (including Peter Shinkoda, THE PREDATOR) and know how badly things might go for these thieves.
But before that Ulysses tries to come in to negotiate, and his two idiot deputies, Mike and Blaine (Ryan Allen, IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON) try to shoot him in the back, mowing down the bank staff by mistake. (Fuckin cops.)
Ulysses tells the robbers something like “The way I see it you didn’t shoot at me, they did, so we’re a team now,” and they set about trying to determine what the fuck is going on and how to get out alive. When they talk to the mayor (Henry Winkler, SCREAM) on the phone it becomes clear that it’s them against the entire town.
Odenkirk is playing an everyman this time, not a secret badass like in NOBODY, but the action is pretty well done, effectively gory, flippant yet effective. Because of this whole crime situation there is a considerable armory for him to dip into. It’s also set during a winter storm, and machine gun muzzle flashes and exploding cars and shit look cool in the snowy night. So hats off to second unit directors Greg Rementer (HOBBS & SHAW), Clayton J. Barber (CREED III) and Justin Yu (DAY SHIFT) and fight coordinators Vlad Rimburg (UNLUCKY STARS) and Mustafa Bulut (Henry Golding’s stunt double in SNAKE EYES).
There are lots of good jokes, but it’s sincere about Ulysses trying to be a kind, fair person in the middle of all this craziness, so it’s a very good role for his particular set of skills (including but not limited to sketch comedy, Emmy-winning drama and a season of Fargo). A pretty good indicator of what his character is all about is that at the beginning of the siege he asks Lori, who he encountered earlier in a motel parking lot, if she was able to get the dog food she needed at that time, and he even remembers her dog’s name. A thoughtful guy.
There are two big moments that felt wrong to me – one involving a big reveal (I didn’t buy that he would lie about his biggest failure but make it sound like he did something way worse) and choosing a random accident as the way to set off the final conflict. Neither of these are mortal wounds, but they’re the kind of little nicks that can add up to knock a movie down from quite good to just pretty good or decent. All the set up of the town before the shit goes down feels pretty slow, but it’s also where the movie feels strongest, because it’s Odenkirk’s character and the various goofballs of Normal bouncing off him that works best. (Also he meets a bartender played by Lena Headey [DREDD]. Obviously if Lena Headey is in town you should try to meet her.)
The director is Ben Wheatley, respected by many for movies including KILL LIST, SIGHTSEERS and HIGH-RISE. I haven’t loved any of his movies yet, but he’s not a hack (except in the sense that he did MEG 2: THE TRENCH, which I support). The screenplay is by Derek Kolstad (ONE IN THE CHAMBER, THE PACKAGE) and reportedly he actually had an outline of it before NOBODY, talked about it with Odenkirk and they ended up developing it together enough that in the end they both got a story credit.
I don’t know if there’s meant to be any subtext in this, and I don’t see a straight forward allegory, but to me personally this story is about that feeling so many of us have had in the past decade or so, that some of our fellow Americans, supposedly regular old “normal” folks, have disappointed and even betrayed us, taken a dishonorable route, and still tried to play it off like they’re still just regular, harmless townfolk. You’re not supposed to judge them for it, you still have to be friends with them, and don’t you dare call them deplorable.
Ulysses is no saint, he’s punishing himself for his own failings, but one of his strengths is recognizing that they are failings, particularly in the case of having not believed a girl whose “upstanding citizen” of a father was abusing her. He could’ve stepped in, but he didn’t. In his new job he’s once again trying to skate by without rocking the boat, but then he’s sort of forced to put his foot down. Well, he could join them and get lots of money, but he chooses the other path.
And then he tries to make peace – forgiving people who tried to kill him, proposing a truce where they can all work together to survive. It feels like it’s supposed to be a positive outcome, but if I understand correctly, it does not fix anything in Normal. Maybe nothing can. Good for him though if he doesn’t have to answer for the many, many deaths that happened during his brief tenure (including when he [spoiler] blew up the mayor).
To my tastes this is not in the league of NOBODY as an action movie or as a novel use of a former SNL writer. But many people seem to like it better, and I support him trying something a little different instead of repeating the same thing. NORMAL is pretty good and I can’t wait for the next ODENKIRK.
April 21st, 2026 at 11:23 am
Haven’t seen Normal yet but definitely intend to do… just wanted to recommend to Vern to watch Free Fire from Ben Wheatley. I am not a huge fan of his work, but had enjoyed Free Fire quite a bit. Give it a shot.