“Normal” director Ben Wheatley and writer Derek Kolstad deserve praise for many reasons, chief among them their brevity and self-awareness. Festival films often implode under the weight of their importance and length, a recipe for audience exhaustion and diminishing returns. “Normal” commits the fairest trade of them all—it rewards its audience’s consideration, dollars and attention by delivering precisely what they want. It may seem Transactional and fan-service-y, but it is a welcome dose of honesty and unpretentiousness. Sometimes, all audiences want is a damned good time at the cinema, and “Normal” more than delivers that.
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The necessities of plotting and characterization might seem besides the point in a picture designed to deliver ball-busting action. Thus, seeing how beautifully “Normal” sets up its gallery of characters and supporting players is a joyous surprise. It is a credit to writer Kolstad that every last bit player gets a stand-out moment and contributes to the whole. It is the kind of filmmaking that makes actors happy to play in more minor roles, too, because in “Normal,” ALL the roles matter.
“Normal” improbably begins with a prologue set in Japan, where two Yakuza sentinels are dispatched to the fictional, humorously named, provincial town of Normal, Minnecity, to execute a mission. Cut to wintry Normal, a town of a mere thousand, where the sheriff has died and Bob Odenkirk’s Ulysses has arrived to serve in an interim capacity. “Normal” takes the first third to set up over a dozen characters, including those played by Henry Winkler, Lena Headey, Ryan Allen & Billy MacLellan, with winking humor, giving everyone an eccentric personality. Ulysses’ goal is not to cause waves and hand over Normal, exactly as it was, to the newly elected sheriff in six weeks.
An attempted robbery at Normal’s one bank brings things to an early boil, setting up the nearly hour-long finale, which occupies the rest of the picture. Seeing all of the film’s crisscrossing plotlines crash headlong into a singular event is incredibly satisfying. Ulysses’ attempts to thwart the robbery are met with the townspeople shooting at Ulysses, putting him in league with the bank robbers to save his life. It is then that the outrageous conspiracy involving all the townspeople and the Yakuza comes to the fore, turning Normal into an icy paintball rink as everyone shoots at everyone else, and the body count piles up into triple digits.
If you can imagine a firearm kill, an explosion, or a knife-fight, chances are that Wheathely has packed into “Normal”— so bountiful are the action confrontations with various configurations of characters. The ingenuity in getting every last supporting player involved in the action melee is dazzling. Wheatley and Kolstad, like the good filmmakers they are, pay off every set-up and make sure every Chekov’s gun is fired, literally and figuratively, within the breezy 90-minute runtime. There are no loose ends, and all the details are worked out like a beautifully rendered short story or novella. The writing quality is noticeably superior to what you expect from the action genre.
Like Liam Neeson, Bob Odenkirk came to action later in life and excelled similarly after his “Nobody” series became an unexpected hit. He continues in his usual avuncular mode, a reluctant badass who, nonetheless, can throw down with the best of them and whoop ass when the occasion calls. He is supported by stand-out supporting players, too numerous to name, all getting to shine in carefully crafted moments. In a welcome nod to inclusion, joining Odenkirk as an action badass is non-binary star Jess McLeod, who plays the child of the prior sheriff who was, it turns out, offed as part of the conspiracy.
Writer Kolstad is already a big name in the action genre, having written the “John Wick” films for Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, Keanu Reeves, and “Nobody” for Odenkirk. From a screenwriting point of view, “Normal” is his most satisfying work to date and is also a return to form for director Ben Wheatley. After the detours of “Rebecca” and “The Meg 2, “Wheatley displays exceptional verve and spirit in the action scenes and steadily keeps the story humming along. Tech credits serve the film well with the wintery, provincial setting, evocative of “Fargo,” successfully rendered.
The best audience to watch a film with is the Midnight Madness crowd at the Toronto International Film Festival. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and the atmosphere is so celebratory that they could make the dullest film a great experience. But give them a good picture; it is like a sporting event. They gave Wheatley, Kolstad, and Odenkirk a hero’s welcome and brought the roof down with thunderous applause and cheers throughout the hour-long finale. Hopefully, audiences around the country will come out to have a similarly joyous, communal, cinematic experience when “Normal” plays in cinemas later this year. [B+]
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