Normal

After Nobody and its sequel, the similarly titled Normal could easily be mistaken for the latest in Bob Odenkirk’s one-everyman-army series. And that wouldn’t be entirely wrong. While Normal sees the former Saul Goodman playing a world-worn cop rather than a retired family-guy assassin, and has a different setting (an apparently sleepy, snowy town slap-bang in Coen territory), it is very much a companion piece. Once again, Odenkirk has teamed with Nobody/John Wick writer Derek Kolstad. And once again he proves surprisingly limber as a gritty action hero, who in one sequence gets handy with a meat tenderiser during a brutal diner-kitchen brawl, and in another metes out explosive justice with a repeating grenade-launcher.

In a familiar Western-vibed plot that’s essentially Assault On Precinct 13 via Hot Fuzz, Odenkirk’s interim sheriff Ulysses is assigned to a recession-hit middle-of-nowhere which has recently lost its chief. Expecting the usual “good people, small problems”, he plans to leave the place exactly as he found it. Although, he’s a little puzzled by the station’s hugely overloaded armoury. And the fact that the little old lady who runs the yarncraft store has a police scanner. And what’s with those nine-fingered Japanese security guards? Still, he doesn’t want to rock any boats, and insists that “life’s a little easier when you care a little less”. Ulysses isn’t a cynic so much as relatably — and likably — realistic. But when a pair of out-of-towners unwisely decide to rob the bank during a blizzard, it all kicks off in a bullet-torn shitstorm, where the line between ally and enemy refuses to stay put. The time for being realistic is over.

To conduct all the grindhouse-style chaos that ensues, Odenkirk and Kolstad have pleasingly enlisted our very own Ben Wheatley. They evidently appreciated the Essex-born director’s ability to blend the comedically mundane with tongue-in-cheek extremity, and it’s easy to relate Normal to a few of his previous joints, not least Sightseers and Free Fire. Wheatley is as adept at bringing out Ulysses’ warmth and weariness as he is revelling in the solidly choreographed, town-trashing savagery, while also letting the story’s MAGA-era critique seep through.

Coming in at a lean 91 minutes, Normal doesn’t mess about. While its sprightly pacing is mostly to its credit, it does have a habit of highlighting a detail — Ulysses’ tragic backstory, the ostracisation of the previous sheriff’s trans kid (Jess McLeod), the presence of Lena Headey in the cast — and then not really taking it anywhere. Thankfully, this isn’t enough to derail the film’s borderline-silly fist-and-trigger antics, and it’s about as fun and subversive as you’d hope for an Odenkirk/Wheatley collab.