In Normal a troubled officer takes on the “simple” job of interim sheriff in a small Minnesota town. Then, everything erupts in massive gun battles that consume the entire town. The movie is packed with foul language and excessive bloodiness, caused by stabbed flesh and head-obliterating explosions that are played for humor.
Ulysses Richardson used to be a darn good cop. He was a pretty good husband, too.
However, police work takes its toll. And something happened in Ulysses’ past that, well, turned him a bit dark inside. It pushed his wife away, too. And now he’s sitting on the deeply frozen streets of Normal, Minnesota, leaving messages for his estranged spouse, who never seems to pick up his calls.
Ulysses has taken on the “interim” role of town sheriff. He’s a low-risk placeholder known for his laid-back, don’t-upset-the-applecart ways. His motto is: “Leave a town the way you find it.” He’ll be in Normal for eight weeks while the townsfolk elect a permanent sheriff, and then he’ll move on.
Thing is, something feels off about this place called Normal. Yeah, at times it’s a typical ice-bound town where a sheriff is only needed to calm arguments between neighbors or help shoo a local moose out of the snowy streets. But other times, well … there are far too many guns in this place, for one thing.
The police station has an armory worthy of a medium-sized army. The owner of the yarn shop has a shotgun near her cash register. And the local diner has literally decorated its walls with firearms of every stripe. And Ulysses isn’t all that certain that those weapons aren’t loaded.
It turns out that this small berg in the middle of frozen nowhere has a secret. And when a pair of outsiders happens to drift in and try to rob the local bank, that secret comes spilling out: There’s something hidden in the bank’s vault that shouldn’t be in a small flyover spot on the map. When the vault is opened, alarms ring out.
And now interim sheriff Ulysses Richardson has a dickens of a problem on his hands. He’ll need to take cover and grab a gun. A big gun. Leaving Normal the same way he found it might just require more effort than he expected.
Ulysses appears to be a good man, despite the problems in his past. He wants to do right by the townsfolk he meets. He even wants to calmly defuse the situation with the drifter couple who are trying to rob the bank. But everything goes unexpectedly sideways, forcing Ulysses to protect a few but kill a lot (which isn’t so positive).
When deadly thugs roll into town, a police deputy lies about their identities, presenting them as a pastor and congregants from a local Protestant church.
None.
Except for Ulysses’ scenes where he initially meets the people of Normal, the majority of this film is filled with blood-gushing violence.
In close-up examinations, we see men chopping off their own pinkie fingers. A man gets his head lopped off by a katana sword. During a thumping struggle, an individual gets a large nail jammed into his eye and then his face gets slammed into a wall, pushing the nail into his brain. People get stabbed in the neck and bleed out with gushing spurts. Someone gets a stiletto jammed up through his chin and out through his eye. We see an abusive father shot between the eyes. There are also a variety of punishing hand-to-hand battles that feature bones smashed and broken by different heavy objects and weapons.
People get thrown backward by shotgun blasts and other scene-riddling weaponry. Gun battles rage in indoor confines and out in the snowy streets. Blood splatters walls, floors, ceilings and roads. Some men are literally blown to bits by explosive shells, dynamite and C-4. Heads are blown off repeatedly. Eyes get obliterated by gunshots. And some dynamite eruptions leave people writhing on the ground with crisped and torn skin. One gun battle features a room full of people standing nearly toe-to-toe as they shoot and slash at each other. In the end, we see each of their dead bodies in the gore-plastered space.
And all of this over-the-top flesh rending is delivered for “humor’s” sake.
30 f-words and a half-dozen s-words are scattered throughout the script, joined by a handful of uses each of the words “h—,” “a–hole,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “p-ss.” God’s name is blended with the word “d–n” more than a dozen times.
Ulysses never shies away from a drink. He pours himself a shot from the former sheriff’s huge, wall-lining stock of expensive booze. He plays pool with a local bartender while gulping glasses of alcohol. He steps into a drunken person’s truck and shares a bottle with her. And later he sips from a flask. Several others join him in his imbibing.
[Spoilers are contained in this section.]
The central conceit of this pic is that the entire town of Normal is in on protecting massive amounts of illegal bullion and cash connected to a foreign Yakuza gang. Literally everyone in town is corrupt and willing to kill any threat to their secret.
Actor Bob Odenkirk has lately been leaning into average Nobody roles. You know, the Joe Schmoe who suddenly unpacks unexpected skills and protects people he cares about. This time he slips into the roll of an average nobody cop. And the average Mayberry-like berg of Normal, Minnesota, goes kaboom.
Granted, the town’s quirky secret comes to the fore early, and that twist will probably catch many viewers by surprise. The resulting grisly violence in snow-blown streets is supposed to be funny in a “Ha! His head blew off!” kinda way. But while Odenkirk’s last few films have held a certain amount of winking, heavy-fisted charm for John Wick fans, Normal whiffs completely.
The script is unbalanced and seems to cry for a lot more polish. The good-guy heroism never clicks. The dialogue limps, profanities placeholding anything that might approach the level of wit. The surprises … aren’t. And the whole movie feels like a lot of pointless carnage and dynamite-in-your-face gore.
Normal definitely fits the blood-spatter movie template that Hollywood has been cranking out as of late. But sorry, a normal good time at the movies, it ain’t.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
