Directed By Ben Wheatley

Starring – Bob Odenkirk, Lena Heady, Henry Winkler

The Plot – A neo-Western thriller that stars Bob Odenkirk as Ulysses, an unassuming substitute sheriff assigned to the quiet Midwestern town of Normal. Seeking a temporary escape from personal and professional turmoil, Ulysses instead finds himself drawn into a crisis when a botched bank robbery exposes a dangerous secret beneath the town’s calm exterior. As tensions escalate, he is forced to confront his troubled past and the true nature of the community he has been tasked with protecting.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, and adult language.

Normal – Official Trailer | Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey | Now in Theaters

POSITIVES

After the devastating disappointment that was Nobody 2, it was beginning to look like Bob Odenkirk’s days as an action hero were numbered, however with Wheatley’s penchant for grittily merciless atmosphere, commanding less humor than we’re typically used to with Odenkirk vehicles, and more of the action spectacle that sizzles in a theatrical engagement, we get a frenetically frenzied film that enables him once more to brandish the blue collar everyman that is mostly absent from cinema, with a film that might fall noticeably flat from the original Nobody, even as it succeeds triumphantly superior to its sequel. For starters, the action itself might not be anything special, in terms of technicality or sequencing, but it does effortlessly elicit an intoxicating fun factor that not only succeeds on account of rip-roaring sound design and enthralling handheld photography, but also buckets of brutality that inflict a ruthlessness to those involved, earning every square inch of its necessary R-rating, in order to convey the magnitude of the dangerous entities involved in such an established conflict. All of this is not to say that humor doesn’t exist in Wheatley’s direction, but rather that it subtly finds its way to the caustic candidness of his maniacal macabre, supplanting the kind of gut-busting humility for vulnerability that has always been a part of Wheatley’s career in action, all the while easing the tension of Odenkirk as a co-writer to unnecessarily inject a punchline every couple of minutes. On top of the rambunctious action, Odenkirk is still charmingly resilient as the central protagonist, but Wheatley’s sharp delve into the darkness and disparity of small town isolated settings, like Fargo, allow him the opportunity to flex his dramatic chops while lending credence to the thematic impulses of his script, especially once the initially intended ambiguous backstory of the character’s design starts to unravel the longer we tread into the engagement. Because of such, Odenkirk plays Ulysses as close to the chest as humanly possible, with every ounce of his vulnerability stemming from a regretful past that has come to materialize the flexible enforcer that we see before us, yet one that never sacrifices the believability of Odenkirk’s imposing stature, which seamlessly balances fearlessness and adaptability, as a means of evening the overwhelming odds against an onslaught of an army, making this feel uniquely different of an approach than that of Hutch in the Nobody franchise. Aside from tonal firmness, interactive action, and a sternly sensible turn from Odenkirk, Wheatley’s direction effectively lends itself towards fleshing out this hole in the universe of a town that feels very lived-in with this unidentifiable disconnect from the outside world, despite a barebones script that minimizes opportunity to make it a character of its own in the film. What’s most vital here is how it doesn’t demean the townsfolk’s intelligence, nor does it take ample opportunity to humiliate them, as a means of coercing the desperation of the comedic material, instead zeroing in on the ins and outs of the many established dynamics every bit as much as the lived-in histories, in order to paint a false sense of security towards their morality, in turn driving the speculation factor of attempting to get a grasp on everyone involved with this aforementioned town secret. Lastly, while this is unfortunately an inconsistent experience, on account of its two halves, I will say that my interests began to pick up increasingly once the movie gets into its action-oriented second half, particularly once one major twist has Ulysses re-evaluating whom he can trust among the townies. While the storytelling doesn’t delve any deeper during this superior section, with regards to compelling characterization outside of Ulysses, it does brandish more of the unpredictability factor that makes every character feel expendable in the crosshairs of its combustible elements, surmising situational stakes as a result of Wheatley’s dangerously volatile atmospheres.

NEGATIVES

While Normal has plenty of redeeming qualities that could prosper enough entertaining enticement to maintain the vested interests of those hardcore action nuts who love turning their brains off in movies, there are just as many condemning detractions that squandered my own experience with the film, particularly its dreadfully slow opening half, which took more time than I would’ve liked setting the character motions to movement in a film that barely clocked in at 86 minutes. Throughout this first half, we not only receive long-winded exposition in the form of Ulysses calling home to his distant wife, an obvious device for the movie to talk directly to the audience as neatly digestible as possible, but also a smorgasbord of character introductions that tediously disengage any semblance of surmising mystery to the untimely death of this police sheriff, in turn smothering us with so much sacrificial small talk that definitely deserved to be hemmed inside of another cut in the editing room. It’s strange that Wheatley’s film is a story of two halves, with the first feeling too long and stuffily enacted, while the second feels abrasively urgent, with such little downtime to keep from feeling overwhelmed with repeated stacking, crafting this confrontational quality to the pacing, in ways that kept me from fully investing in a single one of the characters, outside of Ulysses. This is especially a problem when you consider the remarkable amount of characters that the film introduces then doesn’t follow through on, and considering the film wastes away performance opportunities from charismatic heavyweights like Lena Headey and Henry Winkler, it cements the notion that the screenwriting only occupied itself as a vehicle for Odenkirk’s talents, forcing the weight of the movie’s responsibility squarely on his shoulders, the likes of which would be easier with a character or performance to balance his herculean efforts. On top of a lumpy opening half that dejects the audience away from committing themselves to these characters, the Yakuza antagonists are just as bland and inconsequential to the development of events that elevate the tensions of this small town, where you could remove them completely from the film’s finished product, and so very little would be lost because of it. When you consider that the opening scene is devoted to depicting how dangerously irrational this entity truly is, even against their own soldiers, you expect them to be a continued avenue of exploit throughout the movie’s duration, but they disappear from the fray for the next hour, and only return for the film’s final twenty minutes, leaving a lack of adversarial equal to Odenkirk’s Ulysses, which in turn keeps the psychology of this conflict from ever feeling crucial or at the very least insurmountable, leaving it the single most glaring blemish of Odenkirk’s three action vehicles to this point. Finally, the script itself becomes so tediously enamored with increasing twists that it not only takes away some of the spontaneous sting of their sudden impacts, but also further obscures the morality of characters who continuously weave in and out of compromising, leaving it difficult to accurately assess the motivations of what illogically transpires. Once more, I understand that this is a movie experience that values physicality over psychology, but the longer you think about some of these character actions, the longer it feels irrational that any of them would be capable of keeping this kind of secret from the outside world, and the material becomes so compressed by the incessant need to brandish so many of them during a short period of time, that it makes such a short engagement feel tediously overwhelming with so much repetition, where just one or two of them would’ve been enough to maintain curiosity, even without the ability to attain a firm grasp on the design of these flimsy characters.

OVERALL
Normal is far from the landmark action juggernaut needed to refresh such a derivatively interchangeable genre, but it is a battle royale of decapitated, burned, and brutally bruised bodies that effectively elicit a contagious fun factor to the movie’s underwritten dilemma, allowing Bob Odenkirk to shine once more as the judge, jury, and executioner that enacts such untimely justice. While Ben Wheatley does tap into a feeling of disconnect and direness from small town Americana, the one-dimensionality of the characters and their twist-heavy actions, settle for a mean, lean film that is as generic as its forgettable title, without enough personality or artistic prominence to stand out in an overcrowded room.

My Grade: 6.2 or C