Normal
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 1 hour 30 min
Stars: Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey
Writers: Derek Kolstad, Bob Odenkirk
Director: Ben Wheatly
Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival
Heavy doses of early Coen Brothers comic thrillers saturate this fabulously fun and gratuitously grisly tale of an interim sheriff (Bob Odenkirk) who thinks he’s in for eight weeks of easy duty in a small Minnesota town.
Yeah, right.
Odenkirk (Better Call Saul) stars as the grandly named Sheriff Ulysses, whose personal odyssey has led him from a failing marriage and a checkered law enforcement past to Normal, population 1890 (a number that will presently drop precipitously).
“My goal,” says Ulysses, metaphorically resting his feet on his office desk, “is to leave this town just the way I found it.”
There are, for sure, some unsettling first impressions: Everybody in town – and that means everybody – seems to have an arsenal of high-powered weaponry sitting within easy access. And where did this tiny burg come up with $16.8 million to build a new town hall? Then there’s the fate of Ulysses’s predecessor, Sheriff Gunderson, who died under more-than-suspicious circumstances.
Not to worry, gushes Normal’s avuncular mayor (Henry Winkler). “You could build a whole new life here in Normal,” he assures Ulysses – holding out the possibility that the hard-luck misfit from back East just might have what it takes to become the town’s permanent top cop.
Ulysses puts his initial misgivings aside and begins to believe Normal may be his destiny. But when a slapdash bank robbery attempt goes wrong, an ugly conspiracy begins to emerge. Nosing around where he shouldn’t, Ulysses finds himself facing off against not only the townsfolk of Normal, but also members of Japan’s most hideously violent crime syndicate. Pretty soon, Ulysses’s only allies are the two hapless bank robbers.
It ain’t pretty: Director Ben Wheatley (Meg 2) and cowriter Derek Kolstad (John Wick) unleash a Tarantino-class carnival of dismemberments, beheadings, firebombings, machine gun battles – and for a grand finale, a three-way shootout in a neighborhood bar in which there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander.
Odenkirk’s deadpan style plays splendidly against the over-the-top, stylized violence that surrounds him. His Sheriff Ulysses sounds resonant echoes of Frances McDormand’s pregnant police chief in the Coen Brothers’ breakthrough 1996 film, Fargo (it cannot be mere coincidence that her character’s last name, Gunderson, matches that of Normal’s recently deceased sheriff). And if you find yourself reflecting on the too-good-to-be-true neighbors that bedeviled Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986), well, the spirit of David Lynch would probably not complain.
Featuring a laugh-out-loud, character-driven first half and a second half of nonstop comic book carnage, Normal can’t claim to have something for everybody. But for lots of us, it’s got just enough.
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