Ulysses, a mild but disillusioned police officer, arrives in icy Minnesota to start an eight-week stint as substitute sheriff in the surprisingly prosperous small town of Normal. The previous sheriff has died in mysterious circumstances.
As he recovers from a traumatic episode in his own career, his aim is to serve out his time as quietly and uneventfully as possible and then leave the town pretty much as he found it. Unsurprisingly, events swiftly take a very different, not to mention ultra-violent, turn.
The snowbound setting, quirky but amiable inhabitants and swift intimations of a darker criminal hinterland all give off unmistakable Fargo vibes. Not least because the sheriff is played by Bob Odenkirk, an alumnus of Noah Hawley’s TV spin-off of the Coen Brothers’ classic 1996 picture. (In an obvious nod, Ulysses’ deceased predecessor, Gunderson, shares his surname with Frances McDormand’s cop in the film.)
The silent apparitions of the town’s near-legendary moose and much discussion of coffee also lend these sequences a certain Twin Peaks (1990-1991) flavour. Later on a severed ear is an obvious shout-out to another David Lynch project, Blue Velvet (1986).
Midway through director Ben Wheatley’s new thriller, however, the stylistic reference points shift from the Coens and Lynch to Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter. A farcically botched Bonnie and Clyde-style bank heist hurls the film into a spiral of chaotic and very bloody violence which barely lets up for the remainder of the film.
The townsfolk, it transpires, have saved Normal from the blighted fate of other midwestern towns by striking an improbable Faustian bargain to warehouse piles of loot for the Japanese mob – the Yakuza.
Big body count
Once Ulysses stumbles across this dirty little secret, he finds himself pitted against virtually every single inhabitant of Normal as they battle to keep it quiet. An arsenal of guns, explosives, light artillery and a variety of improvised weapons overnight reduce the town’s main street into a blood-soaked, body-strewn wreckage.
Ulysses, along with the hapless pair of amateur bank robbers caught up in the crossfire, fights off hordes of opponents in the fashion of Tarantino’s From Dusk To Dawn (1996). And once the black-suited Yakuza reinforcements arrive, it resembles Kill Bill (2004). The gory violence, mostly played for blackly comic effect, has a comparably weightless feel.
The army of townsfolk stalking the beleaguered, outgunned trio recalls the zombie-like gang in John Carpenter’s B-movie classic Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). Or perhaps even more the demented small-town denizens of George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973).
As this string of allusions might suggest, Normal makes no great claims on originality. Written by Derek Kolstad, creator of the John Wick franchise – and also 2021’s Nobody, the vehicle for Odenkirk’s late-career swerve into action hero – the film delivers on its simple premise without any great care for complex plotting or plausibility. It serves up modestly inventive pyrotechnics in a businesslike, and at just 90 minutes, very concise fashion.
Fans of Wheatley’s previous efforts in this vein will enjoy his trademark, though not especially unique, combination of humour and extreme violence. Others may feel he does himself few favours with the constant overt nods to far superior filmmakers and risks making his film feel even more derivative and predictable than it confesses itself to be.
There’s certainly little here in the rendering of upstate Minnesota to compare with Roger Deakins’ crystalline cinematography in Fargo. Nor can Wheatley’s energetic but prosaic action choreography ever approach the stylisation of Kill Bill.
Violence aside, then, the film rests heavily on some apt casting and happily the performers are reliably engaging. Odenkirk’s trademark battered decency largely carries the film. But there are also deft supporting turns, notably from Henry Winkler as Normal’s oleaginous mayor and Lena Headey as a tough-dame barkeep. Reena Jolly and Peter Shinkoda are also endearing as the dishevelled slacker bandits (and solicitous dog parents). They vaguely recall the shambolic outlaws of One Battle After Another (2025).
Many of Normal’s influences have serious things to say about modern American life. Normal too gestures in passing to larger issues. The mayor presents the community’s turn to crime as a morally if not legally legitimate reaction to the desperate plight of “flyover states” devastated by industrial decline and corporate predation.
But really this is just window dressing. There isn’t a great deal more to the film than meets the eye, and there probably doesn’t need to be. In its rapid pacing, terse characterisation, brief run time and propulsive, hard-boiled action, Normal positions itself as a latter-day B-movie and mostly delivers on the unpretentious pleasures of that time-honoured form.
Barry Langford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.