Normal
John Wick creator Derek Kolstad teams up with star Bob Odenkirk and director Ben Wheatley for B-movie throwback Normal. Unfortunately the results are a lot less than the sum of their parts
It’s been interesting to observe the trajectories of Bob Odenkirk and Ben Wheatley’s careers. The former has reinvented himself as a hangdog action hero (think Charles Bronson but more soulful) with his Nobody franchise, while Wheatley has settled into the journeyman role, although he still gets to tinker in his eldritch sandbox (see the self-produced BULK) between director-for-hire gigs like Meg 2: The Trench and this lean little comedy thriller.
Normal is written by Derek Kolstad, who’s also behind the John Wick and Nobody films, and his setup is pure western: a troubled lawman (Odenkirk) is shipped in to a sleepy town (the fictional Normal, Minnesota) to be its temporary sheriff. The breezy first half of the film sees him meeting the quirky townsfolk (a sleazy mayor, a flirty barmaid, a little old lady who runs a haberdashery), and the frenetic second half sees those same townsfolk trying to murder the sheriff when he uncovers that, you guessed it, the town isn’t as run-of-the-mill as its name suggests.
I’d be lying if I said my lizard brain wasn’t juiced by some of Wheatley’s brutal setpieces, like a nasty brawl in a hardware store, and Odenkirk makes for a convincing bruiser. But too often Kolstad’s script, a derivative salad of Hot Fuzz, Fargo and Assault on Precinct 13, is left wanting. The townsfolk are as generic as they come (including those played by blink-and-you’ll-miss-em stars like Henry Winkler and Lena Headey), and even Arnie would baulk at laboured one-liners like “physics, bitch!”
Released 15 May by Vertigo; certificate 15