By Dan Skip Allen

Bob Odenkirk is an actor who’s had an interesting career. He started out as a comedian then he got his most career defining role as Saul Goodman in “Breaking Bad” and parlayed that into a starring role in his own series from the creators of “Breaking Bad”, “Better Call Saul”. A show that lasted a handful of years and was nominated for a lot of awards. On a break from seasons of “Better Call Saul” he did a little movie called “Nobody “ from one of the creators of the John Wick franchise, Derek Kolsted. After “Better Call Saul “ was over, he decided to make the action genre his new thing, and so now he’s done “Normal” directed by Ben Wheatley, no stranger to this genre. Maybe Odenkirk should have stuck with his dramatic series because this isn’t his thing anymore.

Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) is tasked with being a fill-in sheriff, a replacement if you will in this small town in the county of “Normal.” Minnesota. Not Normal Illinois to be clear. How original to use the title of the film as the name of the town/county just to prove a point how boring and / or quiet this little town is. The previous Sheriff died in a “quote en quote” fishing accident under suspicious circumstances. When he gets to town, the other sheriffs show him the lay of the land. It’s not until he goes to the wake of the previous deceased Sheriff that he starts to figure out who’s who in this small town. He holds up in a little hotel and starts going around meeting the locals. His sixth sense as a sheriff in the past started kicking in. He has a reputation of being laid back, though, as people mention a few times to him. When a bank robbery happens, the real truth about this town and its big secret everyone is keeping comes to the forefront. 

This film has two inciting incidents. One is near the beginning of the movie and one at the end. The first is the bank robbery. Odenkirk ‘s character has good sense, and he figures out some shady characters at the hotel he’s staying at. He also finds out who he can trust in this one horse town. Namely, the daughter of the previous Sheriff, Alex (Jess McCleod), and who he can’t. The mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler). He tries to put together in his head what is going on with these people, and in order to do that, he goes to diners and a local bar where he meets Moira (Lena Headey). She’s the bartender at the bar, but she’s hiding something. Earlier (Rob De Yeager) has shotguns all over his diner that is very suspicious to the new sheriff. A lot of these characters come across as very shady.

Ben Wheatley is a good director. He’s able to make a good movie for a small budget, as evident by “Free Fire”. Once he’s got a budget, his films have become bloated and not very good. Here, he goes back to making a small budget movie once again, but even he can’t turn this very ridiculous premise into something that resembles a good film. He’s hampered by a horrible script from Odenkirk and Kolsted. It’s mindless and only serves to give some more of what Odenkirk got from “Nobody”. That’s action scenes, and to show he can be a brave hero once again. The problem is that any kid out of screenwriting school could have come off with this story. It’s amateur hour for sure. The twist that the movie hides for the first third of the film is completely preposterous, and nobody would believe it. Maybe a child would, but then again, they shouldn’t be seeing this movie anyway. 

There are two things the film is trying to say, even though it doesn’t matter because of how ridiculous it is. Those are how everyone in this town has a gin of some kind. Even an old lady has a couple of guns. A shotgun and a pistol under her counter. Look, I know the Second Amendment rights have been a hot-button topic in this country for a little while now. I personally don’t own a gun, but I think responsible people should have the right to own a gun, not thirty guns like some people I know. You don’t need thirty guns. I’ll stand by that statement. The movie shows how crazy that everyone has weapons. The second thing is aliens in our country. There is a subplot which I can’t say much about in my review because of spoilers but there are people from another country who have a vested interest in what happened at the bank robbery and they fly in to protect their assets if you will. We have enough crime and trouble with American citizens that we don’t need to worry about foreigners that much. Sure, there are some drug cartels that have had their toes in our country, but American authorities have snuffed most of those out. Child abduction rings have popped up a bit, but this is a known thing, and parents are much more careful about keeping an eye on their kids.  That’s about it, though, with foreign crime in this country. We aren’t being infiltrated by aliens from other countries like this movie suggests we are.

“Normal” has a few redeeming qualities to it but at a detriment to the script. There is a lot of humor in the film, but it’s more laughing at how crazy things are in the movie. A lot of the dialogue, the townspeople, is pretty absurd. Now, there are a lot of action scenes that had me laughing. Some characters died in wild and crazy ways. One character dies because a cork from a bottle pops off and ricochets around and hits a shot gun, and it goes off killing the person. Another death that was funny was that a guy is holding a stick of dynamite, and it blows him up. A third was as someone was in the middle of an annoying monologue, their head gets shot just to shut them up. That’s the ridiculousness of this film. It’s so unbelievable. That was the most annoying thing about this movie. I didn’t believe anything that was going on in it from beginning to end. 

“Normal” is a great word to describe this film. Similar to “Crime 101” in that regard. A very bland and simple concept Nobody with a right mind would like or go along with. Odenkirk has fallen into this falsehood of his career as a potential action star. One good turn as an action star in “Nobody” doesn’t make you Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, or Sylvester Stallone. Granted, Liam Neeson has parlayed his career into many more action films after starring in “Taken”. Odenkirk isn’t Neeson, though he’s half his size to begin with. Wheatley had his hands full, trying to turn a ridiculous script into something resembling a good film. I know he tried but unfortunately failed in my eyes. There is one thing about this film that is alluded to because of a weather woman and plays a huge part in the story but even that looked fake and anybody who has seen real snow can tell the difference between fake and real snow. This was obviously not filmed in winter from what I have gathered but the script said it was in Minnesota in the middle of a big storm. I didn’t buy this at all. That’s the kind of thing this movie does over and over again. Nothing is what it seems in a bad way. That doesn’t make me want to care about a film. I sure didn’t care about this one about five minutes after I walked out of it.

2 stars