NORMAL Review

Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) comes to Normal, Minnesota to be the interim sheriff, shortly after the town's previous sheriff died. After learning more about the town and meeting the people in it, including Mayor Kibner (Henry Wrinkler), Ulysses starts asking a lot of questions, suspicious of the story about how the sheriff died. He soon finds out that the town isn't as normal as it seems.

The film itself, however, makes this clear right away by opening on a scene of the Yakuza sending two operatives to the town of Normal. This sets up a tone that takes a bit too long to circle back on.

What we get for the remainder of the first half of the movie is a bit of a slog, especially compared to what one might expect from a movie from screenwriter Derek Kolstad. We spend the first half watching Ulysses be introduced to various different, seemingly normal characters throughout the town one by one and slowly learn new information, which is obviously important, but also feels like it's meandering a bit. We already know there's more to all of this than meets the eye from the opening scene, and that becomes more clear as we learn the suspiciousness of the story behind how the former mayor died. The pacing feels mismatched from how instantly that opening scene threw us in.

Despite the pacing, the first half makes for intriguing set up for some mystery elements that don't really feel like they pay off.

The turn from the slow build of these mystery elements to finding out what's really going on below the surface is so abrupt, it almost feels like it turns completely into a different movie, one closer to the one you might expect.

There is a lot of fun to be had in the second half. Some great action, unique kills, and it all comes to a fine enough conclusion. That might be enough to leave a lot of people satisfied walking out of the movie. For me, it just made the first half feel worse than before. It feels like there was a solid enough idea for a mystery movie about what happened to the previous sheriff in the first half that just gets abandoned half way through to turn into your typical action movie.

As for performances, Bob Odenkirk brings everything you would want to a role like this. He elevates any action movie he's in through his sheer charm and likability. Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher, who play bank robbers Lori and Keith, respectively, also have great screen presence in their roles as two people who thought they were going to rob the bank and ditch town before everything went wrong.

Lena Heady as Moira, however, suffers a bit from the film feeling split in two. She's an interesting enough presence in the first half, playing a bar owner who seems interested in Ulysses' story. But the turn in the second half turns her into a far more stereotypical character who felt very uneven from the person we were first introduced to.

Overall, this movie wasn't a full waste of time, as the second half is entertaining enough, but it does feel overly confused in what it wants to be. Either half of the movie could have been much more satisfying with full commitment to it, but the script holds it back too much for either the mystery or the action to fully shine.

🍿SCORE = 42 / 100