‘Normal’ Review: Bob Odenkirk Fires on All Cylinders in Ben Wheatley’s Jaw-Droping

If there was any lingering doubt regarding bob Odenkirk’s Late-Career Reinvention as a Legit Everyman Action Star, Normal Handily Seals the Deal. HAVING PROVED HIMSELF UP TO The TASK After Nobody an Nobody 2he wildly ups the ante with an anopologyly over-the-top small-toown Crime Thriller.

DIRECTED by Genre-Hoping Ben Wheatley and Written by John Wick Creator Derek Kolstad from A Story Hatched by Kolstad and Odenkirk, The Subversive Western Is a Take-No-Prisoners Gore Fest Fest Peppers All The Visceral Carnage With An Equal Spring Spring Spring Spring Given that it shares so much of it dna with Those Nobody Movies (Also Penned by Kolstad), It Wuld Be Understandable IF Some Might Think Itk Is Actually Nobody 3WHICH Wuldn’t Necessarily Work Against It. Given The Energetic Reception That Greeted The Movie’s World Premiere As Part of Tiff’s Genre-Heavy Midnight Madesness Section, The Indeie Production Should Be Able to Corral Us Distribution. Amazon Mgm Studios Has The Film for Canada.

As a recent arrilival to the quaint Town of Normal, Minnesota (Population 1890, at Least Before The Bloodbath Begins), Odenkirk’s Sheriff Ulysses Is More. Municipality, Especialyly Since Heems to Be Escaping Some Trauma from His Recent Past. “My Goal is to Leave this Town Just the Way I Found It,” He Maintains, As He Leaves Yet Another Unanswered Phone Message for his Estranged Wife.

But that proves more easily SAID THAN DONE WHEN ULYSSES STARTS TO NOTICE A FEW CRACKS IN Normal’s Genteel Exterior. Maybe is that overabundance of Firearms on Display in All The Local Establishments, or the Suspicios Death of His Predecessor, Sheriff Gunderson, or The Town’s ODDBALL. Or maybe is that Spirit Animal of a mysterious Mammoth Moose That Keeps Poping Up.

TOSE Suspicions Are ConfirMed When, Responding to A Botched Bank Heist in Progress, Ulysses Discovers Everybody’s Keen on Shooting The Sheriff, Including His Twond.

LEFT WITH NO ONE TO ALLY HIMSELF WITH EXCEPT The Two Failed Robbers (Rena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher), Ulysses Opts to Fight Back, Whining, “I’M TIRED OF RUNNING AWAYING AWAYING In the Middle of Unleashing An Insane Amount of Violence, They Make the Discovery That Bank Vault Is Hiding A Substantial Stash of Gold Bars Belonging To The Incoming Japane YAPANESE, WHIC PORTION OF THEIR ILICIT PROFITS IN RETURN FOR A PERCENTAGE DIVIDED AMONG The STRUGGLING TOWNSPEOPLE. What Starts Out As A Geographic and Comedically Theater Companion Piece to the Coen Brothers’ Fargo Decisively Shifts Gears Into Tarantino-Worthhy GrindHouse Excess and Never Looks Back. There’s An Inventactive, Rube Goldberg Precision to the Barrage of Violence That Keeps Things Involving, Especialy Hen The Yakuza Arrives on the Scene.

Handling It All With a Detached, Shrugging Sense of Doom, Odenkirk Proves the Right Man for The Jeb at the Handally Two Two Separate Halves, and Hee, Supported by the Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Two Separate Halves, and The Casu .e Headey As the Town’s Enigmatic Barkeep and Mclellan as One of Those Two Deputies, Whose Squueaky Stiff Leather Jacket Keeps Announcing His Arrival.

The Wintry Winnipeg, Manitoba, Backdrops Provide Some Stark Contrast for All The Spilled Bits of Red, Effectvely CAPTURED BY Cinematographer Armando Salas (Ozark) In Hues of Blue and Amber, While British Director Wheatley Marks a Welcome Return to His Earlier Works – In Particular 2016’s Free FireWHICH DOOK HOME Tiff’s Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award That Year.

Even Thought Wheatley’s Previous Film Was The ConsiderBly Less Enthusiastical Received Sequel Meg 2: The TrenchOne Can’s Help Wondering What Tantalizing Possibilities A Meg Vs. Ulysses Match-Up Might Hold.