The town of Normal, Minnesota, is just that: normal. Take a road trip anywhere in America and you’re bound to drive past towns just like it. Old, small towns of just over 1,000 people, just trying to keep their community alive. But we wouldn’t have a movie if Normal were truly normal.
Hired as an interim sheriff after the untimely death of the previous sheriff, Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) moves to Normal in the dead of the Midwest winter and slips right into the role of small-town cop, leaving notes like “park better” on cars instead of giving out tickets. The town’s mayor (a brilliant Henry Winkler) admits he hired this substitute sheriff because of his apathy and reminds him more than once that his town is “one for all, and all for one.”
Ulysses soon discovers there’s something a little off about this sleepy town. For one, they seem to be way better off than a small town in Minnesota has any business being. On top of that, he encounters many business owners with unsafe gun storage, an old yarn shop owner with a police scanner, and even the police department is as well-stocked with weaponry as a small army base. But none of these red flags could have prepared Ulysses for the truth. A truth that comes out when a pair of out-of-towners attempt to rob the local bank.
From here on out, the film is riddled with Final Destination-esque deaths and gory kills. The fight scenes are so chaotic and the deaths so over the top that they make for a fun final hour or so of the film. While I wish we had more time to dig into Ulysses’ backstory or his kinship with Alex (Jess McLeod), the previous sheriff’s transgender teenage child, you can see why director Ben Wheatley and writer Derek Kolstad prioritized a fun, bloody romp over leaning into the emotional side.
But Odenkirk brings such depth to Ulysses when he’s able that it makes you want to know more about his character, even if one is willing to accept that this simply wasn’t the goal of the filmmakers. Still, Ulysses is a lovable character, and Odenkirk has great chemistry with his costars, so you can’t help but root for him.
Normal isn’t anything new; it feels similar to Kolstad’s John Wick, and it’s clear Wheatley is influenced by Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). The biggest gripe is that the film, at times, feels like it was created to serve the twist rather than the other way around. But that doesn’t stop it from being an entertaining watch. It’s an interesting concept, and the filmmakers take it and run with it, but it’s not much deeper than that.
Normal is now playing in theaters nationwide.
