'Normal' review: Bob Odenkirk's action persona hits diminishing returns

Courtesy of Magnolia

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Entering the Liam Neeson phase of his career in a post “Better Call Saul” world, Bob Odenkirk climbs back into the action-movie saddle with “Normal,” a star-driven vehicle that is not to be confused with his other franchise, “Nobody.” Although, frankly, you would be forgiven for doing exactly that. The similarities are hard to ignore. Once again, Odenkirk plays an aging veteran pulled back into violence, forced to confront a militia of armed foreign assailants through an endless gauntlet of fistfights, bone-crunching brawls, and explosive gunplay.

I love Bob Odenkirk. It remains a minor cultural crime that he never won an Emmy for “Better Call Saul,” which, if we are being honest, I would argue is better than “Breaking Bad,” but we do not need to start that war today. Still, this late-career pivot into grizzled action-hero territory is beginning to wear thin. It worked in the first “Nobody” because that film knowingly riffed on the “John Wick” template while carving out an identity of its own. There was character work. There was world-building. There was a sense that the movie understood the joke while still respecting the craft. Ben Wheatley’s “Normal” feels like a diluted version of that idea, stripped of the texture and patience necessary to make any of it land. Without that foundation, the eventual reveals do not intrigue so much as they irritate.

Conceived by Odenkirk and his “Nobody” collaborator Derek Kolstad, the film is set in the midwestern Minnesota town of Normal, a quiet, off-the-radar community that prides itself on keeping things discreet. Odenkirk plays Ulysses Richardson, the interim sheriff after the previous one dies in a suspicious ice-fishing accident. On the surface, the town seems pleasant enough. The mayor, played by Henry Winkler, is affable. The two deputies, portrayed by Ryan Allen and Billy MacLellan, seem harmless. There is even the bartender, played by Lena Headey, who hints at a troubled past of her own. Ulysses, meanwhile, is drafted into the position abruptly, thanks to a flimsy backstory involving a recently collapsed marriage and a vague reputation for keeping his head down.

It does not take long to figure out why Ulysses was chosen for the job. The movie all but hands the audience its cards within the first fifteen minutes. Still, “Normal” manages to escalate from merely predictable to outright ludicrous in its back half, when characters begin making decisions that feel completely unmoored from any recognizable logic. The central conceit involves the Yakuza using small-town banks like Normal’s to stash cash and gold beyond the reach of the federal government, with the town receiving a quiet financial cut in return. For a brief moment, the film flirts with something interesting. There is the suggestion of a commentary on how small-town America survives by looking the other way, how everyone has a price, and how complicity erodes morality over time.

Then the movie abruptly swerves into “Hot Fuzz” territory, and not in a flattering way. Nearly the entire town turns on Ulysses and a pair of bumbling bank robbers, played by Brendan Fletcher and Reena Jolly, launching into a full-blown assault that is meant to be shocking but mostly feels desperate. Characters previously established as mild-mannered and well-meaning suddenly begin gunning people down inside a bank without hesitation. One character even verbalizes the audience’s disbelief with the line, “It makes sense they would be shooting at us, the bank robbers, but why are they shooting you?” The movie seems less interested in dramatizing this moral collapse than in loudly announcing that yes, everyone is in on it.

And it really is everyone. The sweet old lady down the road is armed to the teeth. The friendly police secretary is ready to kill on sight. “Normal” devolves into a chaotic parade of incoherent shootouts and close-quarters brawls as townspeople crawl out of the woodwork to take down their own sheriff. The film wants this to feel darkly comic and unsettling, but it never earns the escalation. When the Yakuza finally arrive, the story pivots yet again into even more outlandish territory, twisting itself into narrative knots it cannot possibly untangle.

By the end, “Normal” has checked off nearly every modern action-movie cliché in the book. The difference is that “Hot Fuzz,” which this film so clearly echoes, took the time to establish its characters and environment, making the absurdity feel purposeful rather than lazy. Here, even the action scenes feel perfunctory, drained of rhythm, invention, or visual flair. The explosions lack punch. The fights blur together. Worst of all, the performances, including Odenkirk’s, feel oddly disengaged. His offbeat toughness worked in “Nobody” because the action had real snap and the filmmaking had confidence. Here, that trademark weary charisma comes off as genuine exhaustion.

“Normal” plods along, stacking mutilated bodies for cheap shock value instead of momentum. At one point, a character asks, “What the hell is going on?”

I kept wondering the same thing.

Grade: D+ 

NORMAL opens in theaters Friday, April 17th.