Normal movie review: Bob Odenkirk’s thriller is undone by weak storytelling

The giveaway are the guns and explosives all over the town, including the police armoury armed to the gills and its most popular diner. Heck, even the ubiquitous nosy old lady seems to have too much of an interest in police activities.

Given that it is bleak America though, Ulysses perhaps expects the guns – preferring at first to raise no more than an eyebrow at them.

However, this is the action phase of Odenkirk’s career, which was born in comedy, and of course, the guns will soon be more than the diner’s decor.

The problem isn’t that, as the film continues to surprise us with the imaginative way in which it stages its slaughter on snow, with the falling flakes and the blinding white blurring the people into shadows, till a bullet renders them crimson red.

The problem is that the town is meant to be hiding a dark secret, and it’s not as dark as Normal imagines. In fact, for whatever it’s worth, the suspense is diluted right at the start when some Yakuzas in Japan kick off the story with chopped fingers and severed heads.

Produced and co-written by Odenkirk, and taking forward the action phase he started with Nobody and Nobody 2 films, Normal wants us to think both about the “everyman” legacy of those films, and not think about them. It also wants us to imagine this town as a dreg of America’s failed economic and social system where, by the way, an actor such as Lena Headey is no more than a two-bit bartender.

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“Life is a lot easier if we care a little less,” says Ulysses.

Normal certainly is easy if you care little.

Normal movie director: Ben Wheatley
Normal movie cast: Bob Odenkirk, Lena Headey, Ryan Allen, Billy MacLellan, Henry Winkler, Jess McLeod
Normal movie rating: 2 stars