In the small, snowy town of Normal, Minnesota, the residents – what few remain – are in mourning for the loss of their beloved Sherriff Gunderston (Pat Harris). Appointed by Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler), Interim Sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) plans to simply keep the peace in the eight weeks before the town can hold their election. This plan goes awry, however, when the burglar alarm is tripped at the town bank, and Ulysses is forced into a much more active application of the law.

Ben Wheatley reunites with his violent muse, Odenkirk, and directs Normal from a script penned by Derek Kolstad allowing the actor a new expression of his loveable-yet-gruff action hero archetype. The 91 minute darkly comic crime caper debuted at the 2025 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival before breaching containment from the doldrums of January and February, spilling instead onto screens in Q2, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Releasing towards the tail end of an exceptionally bloody season in cinemas – Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026), They Will Kill You (2026), and Faces of Death (2026) – Normal strives to be something more than just a slash, hack, and shoot ‘em up melee spending a lot of time setting up this sleepy town before ultimately unleashing its frenetic fury in a hail of gunfire.

Before that, though, we follow Odenkirk’s Ulysses as he solves these micro disputes that pop up around town; pricing arguments at the ammo shop, the wrong color yarn delivered to the craft store, and the most heinous of all, a stuck snack in a vending machine. This first act – cold open in Japan excluded – has all the trappings of Hollywood goes Mid-West, with a bunch of quirky characters that are just a little too nice and sweet that our teeth begin to hurt, but Kolstad’s script keeps the dialogue barbed so that the politeness crosses over into rudeness which is a refreshing deviation from this trope, yet not done in a particularly adept way that we do not also feel as if Ulysses is not already aware of this facade. Kolstand sets the character up so that it makes sense that he is being viewed with an eye of suspicion by the residents, but he also is playing his hand a little too openly for us in the audience that this opening instead of piquing interest, almost drags. It works to the level that is required to move the plot forward because the residents are not looking to hide their motives from each other, and Kolstad is not looking to hide his motives from the audience; rather, it is as if everyone is in on a, for lack of a better word, prank, that Ulysses is blithely unaware of. From the cold open with the Yakuza, we already have some notion of where this plot will ultimately go, so most sense of intrigue or fun surrounding the mystery is gone well before it even started.

Act Two of Normal can be split pretty cleanly into two parts; before and after the inciting bank robbery. The actual robbery is very well formed on the page as a bringing together of all of these various plot points: what the Yakuza are doing state side, what drifters Lori (Reena Jolly) and Keith (Brendan Fletcher) are doing in Normal, and what secrets may Mayor Kibner have been hiding just to name a few. It sets up to be a twisty and fun mystery akin to a pulpier kind of Agatha Christie yarn, but once Kolstad has set up all the pieces on the board, he takes out a machine gun and blows it all off of the table. Beyond the initial not-so-friendly fire towards Ulysses, the next forty or so minutes is just nonstop, overly complicated yet underwhelming, set pieces with one-liners that feel so forced and modern as if Kolstand wants them to worm their way into our meme-able lexicon, but the jokes have no basis in the characters who are saddled with them. Normal becomes just another survive-till-dawn thriller in an already bloated season of such films.

Kolstand does have one more trick up his sleeve, though, for the third act that does serve as a creative way to capstone this film, even if it is woefully underdeveloped. With the Yakuza bosses on their way to check in on the capital they have stored in the bank, the town must rally around Ulysses after spending the night trying to kill him to make the robbery appear like a simple accident and nothing to worry about. The farce lasts mere minutes and once the illusion is broker, the film again erupts into mindless gunfire making it just the last of the many moments across the runtime that tease audiences with a much better film had there been just a little more thought put to the page and a little more ambition by Kolstead to reach for something greater.

Normal is not without something to say, though Kolstand seems wholly unsure of how to say what his on his mind. The first act especially seems to be laying the groundwork for a biting satire about the over militarization of the police, post 9/11 xenophobia and panic, and by the tail end of the second act as dawn draws near, Normal seems to be shaking its proverbial fist at the practical immunity that can be found by law enforcement in the shadow of the blue wall of silence. Earlier in the second act, we are introduced to Alex (Jess McLeod), the estranged daughter of the late Sherriff. Alex is written loose enough that it is hard to pin down exactly how she identifies, but it is heavily implied that she is somewhere under the queer umbrella, and this identity brushes up against her father’s more traditional idea of gender roles in society. This lack of specificity makes her not just a token character, but an exceptionally cheap one at that, and while it does allow for Odenkirk to shade his performance as an awe-shucks, all around good dad, it is an odd addition to a story that already has so many half weaved then abandoned threads.

Its issues aside, Normal is still one of the more delightful examples of this kind of film, and a real treat to see on the big screen and not just dumped onto your preferred PVOD platform, even if it does overstay its welcome. Odenkirk has planted his flag somewhere in the crossroads between Liam Neeson’s late stage, heartfelt, family man thrillers and Jason Statham‘s wild-man, vaguely socially aware action. For the right audience, his picking up of the mantle may be more exciting than for those who are more interested in the mystery and intrigue of the plot, but nevertheless, Normal takes the best elements of its forefathers and brings them together into a film that is nearly bursting with ideas. With a little more restraint – or, rather, focus – shown on the page, Kolstand could have set up Ulysses to be a character we can set our watches around every year or so when the snow begins to melt, and while he teases a sandy-set sequel, it will be a big ask for audiences to join him on his next interim assignment as it will be hard to imagine what, if anything, Kolstand has left on his mind for Ulysses to brush up against with yet never meaningfully contend.