Normal

I absolutely love quirky stories set in small-town America, where darkness, secrets, and revelations always ripple under the surface like a giant sea creature sensed but not seen, until the perfect moment when it breaks the surface and wreaks havoc. Normal, the new film by Ben Wheatley, from a story by star Bob Odenkirk and screenplay by John Wick writer Derek Kolstad, sees Odenkirk as Sheriff Ulysses (echoes of the titular character of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey) arrive in the sleepy snow-bound town of Normal, Minnesota as the interim sheriff following the discovery of their previous sheriff frozen in a snowdrift wearing nothing but his underwear.

Everyone seems friendly, open, welcoming. Of course. And each resident has specific traits that both make them endearing and strangely suspicious, including his colleague Deputy Mike Nelson, played with hilarious nuance by Billy MacLellan. Nelson’s impulsive buy of a leather jacket as a means of manifesting his own police motorcycle figures in to a later key moment with a humorous payoff.

Ulysses gets to know Mayor Kibner, played by “Happy Days” icon Henry Winkler, whose edgy charm clearly contains multitudes. Another resident briefly glimpsed is Moira, the bar owner, played with insouciance by “Game of Thrones” star Lena Headey. It all seems cozy and destined for boring normalcy, as Ulysses strives for and articulates to his estranged wife through letters she’s likely not reading but we are hearing in voiceover. He’s a laid back guy just doing a temporary job and wanting to befriend the community.

All of this goes belly-up once a bank robbery occurs, and the story swivels in a direction I never saw coming. It’s one of those films that is difficult to discuss and review without revealing the intricacies of the plot, including the opening sequence. The dialogue is clever, distinct, philosophical, and witty. Characters are clearly drawn in a very short length of time before the action starts, and the audience is asked to sympathize with certain characters that in most stories would be the antagonists.

Normal has the tone, flavor, and atmosphere of a Coen Brothers movie mixed with over-the-top, almost surreal action sequences that, apparently, have been done to perfection in Kolstad’s work on the John Wick films that have become one of modern cinema’s most celebrated franchises. It moves smoothly between intimate character scenes and explosive action intermingled with sharp dialogue and laugh-out-loud moments of absurdity or poignancy. A hard mix to get right, but the obviously tried-and-true team behind and in front of the camera here displays their obvious ability to pull it off. Normal is both reassuringly familiar in its setting and hilariously fresh and surprising in its twists and turns.