Normal (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
2 days ago
4 min read

NORMAL (2026)

Starring Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey, Reena Jolly, Ryan Allen, Billy MacLellan, Brendan Fletcher, Peter Shinkoda, Jess McLeod, Alex MacMillan, Dan De Jaeger, John C. MacDonald, David Lawrence Brown, Derek Barnes, Megan MacArton, Carson Nattrass, Chad Bruce, Harry Nelken, Bradley Sawatzky, Lauren Cochrane and Takahiro Inoue.

Screenplay by Derek Kolstad.

Directed by Ben Wheatley.

Distributed by Magnolia Pictures. 90 minutes. Rated R.

Back in the days of Mr. Show, who would have guessed that Bob Odenkirk aspired to be a Midwest variation of Jason Statham?

However, in the past decade Mr. Odenkirk has come a long way from his roots as a comedian, sitcom writer and performer. He first broke bad with a supporting character in the later years of the beloved cult favorite series Breaking Bad. He was then picked to be the title character of that show’s spin-off Better Call Saul. Two Nobody movies and Normal later and Odenkirk is better known for surreally violent mayhem than for bringing the laughs.

Which is not to say that Normal isn’t funny – much like the Nobody films before it. It’s just that the humor is eventually crushed by the overwhelming amount of stupidly bloody mayhem. If you think blowing people up by mistake is funny, then maybe you’ll go all in for this.

Personally, eventually the wall-to-wall violence got sort of tiring for me.

Normal is actually, oddly enough, sort of an offbeat tribute to Fargo – an honestly better movie that mixed comedy and violence with much more panache. Both films took place in Minnesota. Normal is the name of a fictional small town in the North Star State, and Fargo, despite being named after a city in North Dakota, mostly took place in Brainerd, MN and the suburbs of Minneapolis.

There is a lot of Fargo fan service here, including naming the previous town sheriff Gunderson and an offhand remark about a different sheriff being on maternity leave. (Arguably the lead character in Fargo was Frances McDormand’s very-pregnant sheriff named Marge Gunderson.) And both of the films derive most of their comedy from the cultural stereotype called “Minnesota Nice,” which suggests residents are unusually courteous, reserved, friendly and mild-mannered compared to people from other states. And they say “ya” a lot.

I’m glad Odenkirk likes Fargo. (Beyond starring in the film, Odenkirk was also a producer and a co-credit for creating the story with screenwriter Derek Kolstad.) I like Fargo too. But perhaps it was foolhardy for him to think he could one up it. In fact, the reminders of Fargo ultimately work to Normal’s detriment, simply because it is so obviously not on the level of its inspiration.

Which actually is kind of a shame, because Normal is the fruit of a clever idea which eventually just spins out of control.

In Normal, Odenkirk plays Ulysses, the interim sheriff in a small, snowy Minnesota town who has taking a series of simple substitute jobs in small towns while he tries to come to terms with some professional and personal issues.

Interim Sheriff Ulysses takes the job in Normal in an attempt to get over a violent double shooting in his past, which left a woman and her predator father dead. Ulysses has gotten PTSD from this experience to the point that he really refuses to engage in most police matters. It also destroyed his marriage – his wife moved away and refuses to take his calls, although he regularly leaves her lengthy voicemails about his progress.

Therefore he took a job at the place he figured was least likely to have any serious crime, a Rockwell-esque town in which he figured he’d waste several months dealing with parking and zoning issues.

However, Normal is not the sleepy bucolic hamlet that Ulysses had imagined. Thanks to a corrupt mayor (Henry Winkler) and a dark pact the town has made with the Yakuza (Japanese organized crime), there is a lot more going on under the surface than anyone would know.

It starts out fun and funny. But once it goes wrong and the bodies start to pile up, the movie spins out to the point that nearly no one will survive. And much like in his similarly hyper-violent Nothing movies, Odenkirk becomes a one-man army who leaves nothing but destruction and dead mobsters and townspeople in his wake.

I mean, I get it. Odenkirk has a hang-dog sense of inevitable disappointment which makes it ironic for him to be an avenging super killer. Which is funny for a while. But as nearly the entire population of the small town is decimated – often through weird accidents, other times through complex Rube Goldberg techniques – you can’t help but notice that this is the exact same thing that happened in both Normal films.

Maybe next time out, Odenkirk should stop trying to be an action hero and fall back on his comic roots.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OndK0w1lYY