The New Normal: Film Review of Normal
★★☆☆
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
It’s a familiar story; a stalwart lawman comes to a wild town and tames it. We’ve seen John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, and many other Hollywood sheriffs do it. It’s a time-honored and somewhat worn cinematic trope, as are stories where a stranger arrives a small town with a deadly secret, as in Harvest Home or Twin Peaks or The Stepford Wives. Mash ‘em up these subgenres, add a lot of red corn syrup, more than a few guns, and bring in a laconic Bob Odenkirk, and you have a movie called Normal, the latest entry in the blood-soaked slip ‘n slide shoot ‘em up movie festival.
Other recent films like Send Help, Weapons, Companion or Nobody have stretched the envelope of comedy, gore, and gratuitous violence across a number of genres like science-fiction, horror, and the desert island rom-com. Eddingtonis another example, although it brings in a tad more depth and social commentary to its vibe of blood, death, and guns, guns, guns.
While campy gore has been an element of the horror genre, it seems to be seeping slowly into crime and detective dramas. It has been argued that “campy horror” is a release from the complicated vibes and abstract concepts of “elevated horror” in pieces like Midsommar, Hereditary, or The Witch. Films like the X trilogy and The Substance are evidence of that reaction, but with dominant elements of gratuitous gore, shallow content, and cheap thrills, these new subsets of horror and action films might very well be mistaken for the classic “B” movie, the staple of Saturday matinees and drive-in double features.
Normal opens in Japan, where three members of the Yakuza, an infamous Japanese crime syndicate, are brutally punished for their incompetence. To atone for their digressions, they are shipped off (without explanation) to the tiny town of Normal, Minnesota.
We cut forward to six months later where Sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) is settling into this position as temporary sheriff in Normal after the mysterious death of Sheriff Gunderson. As he patrols the streets of Normal with dim-witted Deputy Mike (Billy MacLellan), he senses something amiss beneath the superficial normality of the townspeople. We’ve seen them all before: the little old lady who runs the yarn store, the gruff hardware store owner, the jaded bar keeper Moira (Lena Headey), the worldly doctor, and the take-charge Mayor (Henry Winkler) who seems to have something to hide.
Ulysses goes about the work of small-town sheriffing, solving small problems in small ways, staying in a motel at the edge of town. One morning, he is awakened by a young woman Lori (Reena Jolly) banging on a vending machine. He helps her—and her dog Olive—out and sees that she is accompanied by a man who doesn’t wish to reveal himself.
At the sheriff’s funeral, Ulysses gets the feeling something is amiss. The mayor, the doctor, and other townspeople seem to have their stories about the man’s death down a little too pat. Ulysses is also surprised when this daughter Alex (Jess MacLeod) is denied admittance by Blaine (Ryan Allen) the ambitious deputy sheriff.
Everything comes to a head when the bank gets robbed. Ulysses takes charge, enters the bank to negotiate with the robbers (Lori and friend) and is surprised when Deputy Blaine starts shooting at him. Things take a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. The outlaws become the good guys, and the good townspeople do everything in their power to keep their dirty little secret intact. What follows is a carnival of violence, carnage, high-powered firearms, explosives, and even some stabbings. To call it over-the-top is an understatement.
For what it is, Normal is a good movie. It’s entertaining, funny, more than a little campy, and engaging, much like the low-budget “B” movies we used to see at the drive-in theater or at the Saturday matinees when we were kids. They didn’t make you think or feel much beyond shock, a couple laughs, or cheap thrills. While the definition of a traditional “B” movie is that it is extremely low budget, that definition does not necessarily preclude quality. Classic movies like Night of the Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, Them, or The Pit and the Pendulum are all masterpieces in their own way.
The difference with the traditional B-movies and today’s crop is that many of today’s features, especially those produced by Netflix, boast A-quality stars like Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Guillermo del Toro, and more, as well as name directors like Scorsese and others. While Normal was not produced by Netflix, it shares a lot in common with that brand. The lighting, sets, and general mise-en-scene seems a little cliched. The lighting is muted (to help with small-screen viewing) and much of the writing seems to come straight from a set variety of cookie-cutters.
And Normal does give the people what they want. In an enterprising film student attempted to a gun count in this movie, it would probably require multiple viewings running into three figures. A body count would probably not take quite as long but would be right up there. In fact, the non-stop violence gets so pervasive, any element of horror or revulsion or disgust are replaced by amused cynicism—which is what (I guess) they’re supposed to do.
There’s a curious flatness in the tone of this movie. The screenplay hits all the right marks and the narrative meets all our expectations—and the surprise twist in no way exceeds them—but it seems all too familiar. The setting of the Minnesota town and the surrounding landscape is reminiscent of Fargo; even the unexpected entrance of a thieving moose fails to surprise us.
Some actors have the ability to carry a movie by sheer force of their personality. Bob Odenkirk has the sort of presence, although not a glamorous one. He seems to carry a pervading sense of irony and ennui around with him like a child’s overstuffed backpack. As Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul, his absurdly over-the-top hustles—always on the brittle edge of desperation—defined him; as Ulysses, he is defined by a guilt that weighs down Odenkirk’s natural charm. Here he seems like a grumpy old man who sort of remembers being a good time, and the supporting staff, including such notables as Winkler and Headley, just seem to be mailing it in.
One peculiarity here is the filmmakers’ deliberate invocation of The Odyssey in the film. The main character is named Ulysses, his estranged wife is Penny, and he seems to be on a journey to find her forgiveness and get back home to her. This classical allusion is hardly necessary to the story and might be construed as an attempt to give the main character the depth that seems to be lacking in the screenplay.
Unlike the town that is its setting, Normal is exactly what it seems to be on the surface. It’s a gooey, sticky, bloody shoot-em-up full of more guns than a National Guard armory. Parts of it (like the diner décor) are campily funny, but all-in-all, Normal is your run-of-the-mill B movie that, fifty years ago, would have been the second bill of a drive-in double feature.
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