May Bob Odenkirk Always Have as Much Fun as He's Having in Normal
A seemingly earnest new sheriff arrives in a small, apparently friendly midwestern town, only to discover a world of deception behind the citizens’ friendly façade. You’ve seen that story before, lots of times. But that doesn’t mean Bob Odenkirk, the star of the grisly action-comedy Normal, can’t have some fun with it.
Odenkirk’s Ulysses Richardson arrives in the cozy town of Normal, Minn., pop. 1,890, to temporarily take over the job of sheriff until a new one can be elected. The old one has died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, but Ulysses isn’t particularly concerned about that: he’s preoccupied with his broken marriage, and he’s taken the job just so he can have a change of scenery and get his bearings. The annoyances, at first, are the usual ones: One of his deputies, Mike (Billy MacLellan) is annoying—he’s got a new leather jacket that keeps squeaking. There are kerfuffles down at the hardware store, and a moaning moose makes his presence known near the motel where Ulysses is staying. The mayor (Henry Winkler) is your typical gladhander, but there’s something untrustworthy about him too.
Still, there are things to like about the job, including a flirtatious, flinty local bartender (Lena Headey), who may be taking an interest in Ulysses. But he doesn’t have time for romance: when two awkward criminals (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) rumble into town to stage a robbery, he discovers that the bank vault they’re hoping to raid is filled with…
Never mind that for now. The pleasures of Normal, directed by Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Rebecca) and written by Derek Kolstad (of the John Wick movies), depend on going in with low expectations and the knowledge that the movie is adamantly derivative. Any resemblance to the Coen brothers’ Fargo and the subsequent TV series is obviously intentional: the name of the sheriff Ulysses is replacing is Gunderson, clearly a nod to Frances McDormand’s Fargo character.
But chances are you’re not looking to Normal for originality. If you’re hoping for lots of cartoony, bone-crunching violence, you’ve come to the right place. Odenkirk—who also conceived the story with Kolstad—used to be known mostly for his roles in Breaking Bad and its spinoff, Better Call Saul. Long before that, he and David Cross co-created and co-starred in the sketch-comedy show Mr. Show with Bob and David; before that, Odenkirk was a writer for Saturday Night Live. Most recently, he has reinvented himself as an action star in the movies Nobody (2021) and its sequel Nobody 2 (2025). And in Steven Spielberg’s The Post, he gave a superb dramatic performance as Ben Bagdikian, the Washington Post journalist who met with Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 to take possession of the Pentagon Papers, subsequently pushing for their publication. (In one of the movie’s finest scenes, Odenkirk’s Bagdikian makes a series of furtive calls from a bank of payphones, nervously dropping change into slots and dialing semi-memorized phone numbers—he’s getting the job done in the margins, as only a legendary journalist can.)
Is there anything Odenkirk can’t do? His laid-back, unassuming demeanor is one of his greatest gifts, and he puts it to great use in Normal, at least when he’s not gouging baddies in the eye with a sharp implement or crushing skulls under truck wheels. Normal may not be groundbreaking, but it does come equipped with a wicked spirit and some great B-movie energy. The film’s centerpiece is an extravagant bloodbath, set in an old-school small-town restaurant: Its paneled walls are bedecked with stuffed animal heads and (loaded) firearms, and there’s a jukebox loaded with actual 45s. The sequence, a symphony of spontaneous screams and spurting arteries, is scored to Dr. Hook’s 1979 pop ballad “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman,” a stupidly wonderful song you may not have heard in years, if ever. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman” in any film, let alone a violent action movie. Its use may be Normal’s most original stroke, but we'll take it. Never underestimate the power of a jukebox surprise.