TL;DR: Ben Wheatley’s Normal is a fun, flawed, gun-crazy small-town satire that gives Bob Odenkirk another chance to shine as a reluctant hero in a snow-draped Minnesota powder keg. The metaphors are heavy-handed but the carnage is delicious. Solid B-movie thrills with A-list soul.
Normal
Listen, geeks, I walked into Normal expecting another slick Derek Kolstad action joint with Bob Odenkirk doing his quietly-badass thing like in the Nobody movies. What I got instead was a snow-drenched, trigger-happy fever dream that feels like if Coen Brothers decided to remake Assault on Precinct 13 but swapped the urban grit for Minnesota nice and enough AR-15s to arm a small militia. And honestly? It mostly works.
Ben Wheatley, the mad lad who gave us the class-war skyscraper nightmare of High-Rise and then somehow pivoted to directing a giant shark sequel, takes the wheel here. He’s teaming up again with Kolstad (the guy who basically invented the modern John Wick universe) for their third ride with Odenkirk. But instead of neon-lit revenge ramps or underground fight clubs, Wheatley drops us into a sleepy, snow-blanketed town called Normal, Minnesota. Population: 1,890. Gun ownership rate: apparently 110 percent.
The setup is deceptively simple. Bob Odenkirk plays Ulysses, a world-weary lawman with a murky past who rolls into town for a two-month gig as temporary sheriff after the previous one kicks the bucket. He’s not there to shake things up. He just wants to coast, maybe learn a thing or two about small-town life, and then bounce. Classic fish-out-of-water stuff, right? Except this particular pond is stocked with more firearms than fishing rods, and the locals have some very interesting financial ties that stretch all the way to the Yakuza.
Yeah. You read that right. Yakuza. In Normal, Minnesota.
The first half of this lean 90-minute runtime is pure slow-burn character work. Wheatley lets us soak in the folksy weirdness of the town and its inhabitants. There’s the general store that treats its gun cabinet like it’s Fort Knox, the local bar whose walls are basically rifle racks with beer signs, and the police station that’s been quietly stockpiling military-grade gear since 9/11. Every time someone shrugs and says “This is America,” you can practically hear Wheatley and Kolstad swinging that thematic sledgehammer with gleeful abandon.
But here’s the thing. It never feels preachy in the moment because the world-building is so damn lived-in. These aren’t cartoon rednecks. They’re regular people dealing with economic anxiety the only way they seem to know how: by reaching for whatever’s loaded and closest at hand. And when a bank robbery kicks off a chain reaction that turns the quiet streets into a warzone, the escalation feels both ridiculous and weirdly inevitable.
That’s where Normal really starts cooking.
Once the bullets start flying, Wheatley unleashes the kind of unapologetic carnage these filmmakers do best. We’re talking grenade launchers in snowdrifts, C-4 surprises, and enough muzzle flash to turn the midnight blizzard into a disco. The action is visceral, legible even in the pitch-black night sequences, and punctuated by these gorgeous fiery explosions that light up the falling snow like some kind of apocalyptic fireworks show. Armando Salas’ cinematography deserves all the praise here. The gloom never swallows the stakes. Every gunshot and blast feels weighty without turning into murky visual noise.
Odenkirk is, as always, the secret sauce.
His Ulysses isn’t the secret super-assassin he played in Nobody. This guy is trying, really trying, to be the straightforward hero his battered moral compass demands. He’s got baggage. He’s got regrets. He leaves these gloriously awkward voicemail updates for his ex-wife that feel ripped straight out of a Batman: Year One comic. And yet there’s something genuinely compelling about watching him navigate this powder keg with a mix of dry wit and quiet determination. Odenkirk plays the layers beautifully. Broad when he needs to be, emotionally honest when it counts. He grounds the satire without ever winking too hard at the camera.
The supporting cast is packed with quirky delights too. Jess McLeod as Alex, Ulysses’ vengeful nonbinary ally, brings a sharp edge that adds unexpected texture to the ensemble. The townsfolk feel like real people who’ve just been pushed one bank robbery too far, which makes their sudden descent into all-out warfare both funny and a little chilling.
Now, let’s talk about where Normal stumbles. Because it does stumble.
The third act leans a bit too hard into neat coincidences and convenient resolutions. When guns are literally everywhere, sure, one going off “accidentally” can solve a plot problem. But after a while, the pile-up of tidy little bows starts to undercut the chaotic energy the film spent so long building. The metaphor about America’s gun culture, cover-ups, and sweeping unpleasantness under the rug is crystal clear. Sometimes painfully so. And while that thematic weight gives the violence more resonance than your average shoot-’em-up, it occasionally makes the story feel like it’s preaching to the choir rather than letting the chaos speak for itself.
Still, even when the plotting gets a little too on-the-nose, the sheer fun of the carnage keeps you invested. Wheatley knows how to stage mayhem. Kolstad knows how to write characters who feel like they could exist in our world while still delivering the kind of escalating absurdity action fans crave. And Odenkirk? He’s the glue that makes you actually care about the guy in the middle of all the explosions.
Visually, the film is a treat. That constant tension between the serene, snow-covered small-town postcard and the sudden eruptions of violence creates this beautiful dissonance. One minute you’re admiring the moody, atmospheric shots of empty streets blanketed in white. The next, someone’s using a snowplow as an improvised battering ram while bullets zip through the flurries. It’s grotesque. It’s hilarious. It’s strangely poetic.
And that’s the magic of Normal. It wants to be both a raucous action romp and a pointed satire about modern America’s relationship with firearms, fear, and forgetting. Does it completely stick the landing on both fronts? Not quite. The metaphor sometimes overshadows the momentum, and a few too many convenient plot twists blunt the edge of what could have been a sharper climax.
But damn if it isn’t a blast while it lasts.
Odenkirk brings real gravitas to a character who could have easily been a one-note everyman. The supporting players sell the town’s descent into madness with conviction. The action delivers the goods with style and clarity. And Wheatley’s direction keeps everything feeling grounded even when the grenades start flying. For a movie that clocks in under 90 minutes, it packs a surprising amount of thematic meat onto its bloody bones.
In the end, Normal is the kind of scrappy, ambitious indie action flick that doesn’t come around often enough. It’s not perfect. It bites off more thematic real estate than it can always chew. But it’s got heart, it’s got humor, and it’s got Bob Odenkirk doing his damndest to be the hero this ridiculous town deserves.
If you’re in the mood for a violent, witty, snow-soaked satire that knows exactly what it’s poking fun at without ever losing sight of the fun, then Normal is absolutely worth your time when it hits theaters on April 16.
