"Normal" - It's all over our faces.

In a movie like Normal, you can't help but smile some of the time. Not because it's a well-written movie. Not because of stand-out performances. And certainly not because of a title that is so blatantly tongue-in-cheek its subtitle should be a rimshot. You'll smile because you'll recognize it as a guilty pleasure movie within sixty seconds of the movie's beginning. Assuming, of course, your guilty pleasure movies center around action and novelty deaths. See? You're smiling right now, aren't you?

If you aren't smiling, here's the premise of the film. The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) are hiding a fortune in a bank in the tiny town of Normal, Minnesota and have paid off the entire town's population (roughly 1,800) to keep it a secret. A new, temporary sheriff is hired to fill in for a few weeks and knows nothing about that secret. I never said your smile couldn't be accompanied by a massive eyeroll.

In the opening scene, the film establishes exactly what kind of movie Normal will be. Three underlings are brought before their Yakuza boss and ordered to cut off a finger to atone for some unknown failure. Two of them do it, while the third tries to fake it. After taking in the (intentionally) silly attempt at subterfuge, the boss cuts the underling's head off with a sword, a spray of blood flying across the wall. He then orders the remaining two men to Normal, end of scene. With that knowing smirk on our faces, we can expect lots of blood, lots of deaths, lots of action, and lots of jokes that don't quite land.

 

None of which is surprising if you are familiar with the writer of this film, Derek Kolstad. Blood-soaked action flicks filled with plenty of dud jokes are Kolstad's bread and butter. He wrote the first three John Wick films and both Nobody films, all of which feature those elements in spades. And since the Nobody films starred Bob Odenkirk as their main character, it's also not surprising to see Odenkirk take on another Kolstad main character role. The only difference is, this time, Odenkirk plays a regular sheriff instead of a retired CIA assassin. Yes, I know - it's a distinction without a difference.

Odenkirk plays Sheriff Ulysses, who has been hired by the town to temporarily fill in as sheriff after the sudden death of the previous sheriff. The first half of the film is filled with Ulysses performing routine tasks, responding to stereotypical problems found only in small towns, getting to know some of the townsfolk, and noticing odd things here and there. None of that matters to the plot at all, nor does Ulysses' own troubled past. It's all just one long, obvious setup for a punchline to the movie's title. They're not normal. Get it?!

 

Luckily, the film's ninety-minute runtime (which was actually eighty minutes by my watch) demands that the non-action go on for only so long. The action mercifully kicks into gear about halfway through the movie when a pair of bank robbers, Lori (Reena Jolly) and Keith (Brendan Fletcher), demand to be let in the vault of Normal's bank. When Ulysses and his deputies show up at the bank, Ulysses goes into the bank to diffuse the situation, only to find his own deputies shooting at him. Seemingly the entire town, including the mayor (Henry Winkler), shows up to kill Ulysses and the pair of thieves, and the mayor reveals the town's secret to Ulysses. Ulysses teams up with the Moira and Keith and the remainder of the film becomes a series of shootouts and fights frequently punctuated with grisly and/or comical deaths. This is when our smiling truly begins.

For the remaining forty minutes, we're treated to some very creative deaths and plenty of them. Some are of the Rube-Goldberg/Final Destination variety and others are of the shockingly abrupt variety. Without spoiling any kills, there is one quote from Deputy Blaine Anderson (Ryan Allen) that delighted the entire audience, "he's all over my face." The pleasure taken from that line more than makes up for Lena Headey's cringeworthy performance as bartender Moira...and the unanswered question of why Kolstad (and Odenkirk, who received a story credit) went with Yakuza in Minnesota...and the failure to make use of Ulysses' ability to catch an ejected pistol round with one hand...and a random moose. Like I said, it's okay to smile, even if the smile is sometimes in derision.

Rating: Ask for six dollars back, if only for the novelty of it.