A sheriff is transferred to a small town, only to find it harbours dark secrets exposed by a failed bank robbery.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey, Reena Jolly, Ryan Allen
It's easy to forget how we all scoffed back in the '80s when it was announced that Bruce Willis was set to star in an action movie named Die Hard. The wise-cracking dweeb from Moonlighting? Really? That was an era when action cinema was dominated by the tough tits of Sly and Arnie. The idea of an actor mostly known for comedy heading up an action movie was unthinkable. Now of course we think of Willis as an action star first, a comic performer second.
We didn't learn our lesson though, did we? In 2008 we once again scratched our heads when the star of such worthy dramas as Schindler's List and Michael Collins was cast as the ass-kicking lead of a little action movie called Taken. And again just a few years ago when comedian Bob Odenkirk was cast as a government assassin in Nobody. Odenkirk has continued this unlikely career reboot with a sequel to that movie and now Normal, which sees him reunite with Nobody screenwriter Derek Kolstad.
This time Odenkirk is playing Ulysses, a big city cop who follows the lead of Murder She Wrote's Mort Metzger in taking a job as Sheriff in what he thinks is a quiet, unassuming town. Just as Metzger quickly discovered Cabot Cove was the per capita murder capital of America, Ulysses finds that Normal, Minnesota is far from living up to its name.
The influence of the Coen brothers' Fargo is front and centre, with Ulysses replacing a Sheriff Gunderson who died in mysterious circumstances that the local mayor (Henry Winkler) is suspiciously keen to brush over. When a pair of criminals (Reena Jolly, Brendan Fletcher) arrive in town and attempt to rob the local bank, Normal's secret is exposed. There is something in the vault that the mayor and the town's leaders will literally kill to protect, and Ulysses is forced to team up with the bank robbers when he finds himself under fire from the very townsfolk he was assigned to protect and serve. Oh, and the Yakuza show up too.
After a run of ill-fitting duds (Rebecca, In the Earth, Meg 2), director Ben Wheatley finds his feet with Normal's mash-up of extreme violence and comedy proving a comfy fit for his style. Wheatley's approach here is similar to Edgar Wright's with Hot Fuzz, but where Wright was parodying the likes of Tony Scott and Michael Bay with his action pastiche, Wheatley's style is more in tune with Walter Hill crossed with Sam Raimi. The violence is surprisingly nasty, but never in a way that feels mean-spirited and ugly (there is thankfully none of the thinly veiled contempt for the white working class of the despicable church massacre of Kingsman: The Secret Service).
Once Ulysses starts lobbing sticks of dynamite it's very clear that Wheatley is making a live action Looney Tunes cartoon here. There is one cleverly constructed kill that employs the sort of Rube Goldberg machinations that Gore Verbinski would applaud for its audacity. What makes it so much fun is that the movie makes it clear that anyone - save, let's face it, for our protagonist - can die at any time, with characters dispatched just as you thought they were set to play a substantial role. Some of the stereotypes of small town action moves are turned on their head, with Ulysses finding surprising allies and enemies.
Maybe it's because we've seen him kick ass in the Nobody movies, but Odenkirk is fully convincing here as a quiet-spoken Charles Bronson type who is fully prepared for the war he finds himself fighting. The idea that Odenkirk would play the one straight man in a movie otherwise populated with comic figures would have seemed baffling just a few years ago, but at this point we don't bat an eyelid. Odenkirk has morphed into a very old school action star of the '70s mould. He doesn't have the cartoonish physique of Sly and Arnie, and his characters avoid the constant audience winking of today's screen superheroes. Odenkirk looks like your dad, and he now makes the sort of meat and veg action movies you can comfortably watch with your old man.
Normal is in UK/ROI cinemas from May 15th.
