Publication Date: 04-16-2026

Normal (2026) review

Dir. Ben Wheatley

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

English filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s film Free Fire left me confounded and underwhelmed back in 2016. Despite clocking in at sub-90 minutes, it sputtered in attempt to bridge humor with violent, noisy shootouts. I saw it in theaters, found it modestly enjoyable, and haven’t thought much of it since. He’s directed a few films since, including Meg 2: The Trench, which served as his mainstream debut, but none have come on my radar until Normal.

Starring Bob Odenkirk, Normal is not prepared for how much it is going to be confused with Nobody, another Odenkirk action-comedy released this same decade. The films even share the same writer in Derek Kolstad, though Kolstad claims he wrote the script for Normal prior to that film being released, raking in millions at the box office, and showing Odenkirk had some promise as an action star. I dunno. While Odenkirk is an actor always capable of bringing a smile to my face, it’s somewhat discouraging to see him drown in John Wick rip-offs that come across as so generic they would give Liam Neeson pause. It’s not that Normal is a bad movie, it’s that it lives up to its title in a way that uninspiring.

With Normal, Kolstad’s at least keen to rip off Fargo, assuring we get some pretty, snowy cinematography to go along with an otherwise formulaic action template. The title is derived from a sleepy town in Minnesota, home to just a little over 1,800 people, where Odenkirk’s Ulysses (not even noteworthy enough to have a last name) is sent to serve as the interim sheriff following the death of the previous one. The town looks like every other sleepy Midwestern locale boasting a “historic downtown,” but from the jump, Ulysses notices some oddities. Stockpiled in local bars and of course the police station, is enough ammo to keep the Mexican cartel busy for the remainder of the year. Moreover, a local raffle having an eye-popping $6 million jackpot. “The town really banded together to raise that much,” Ulysses’ partner (Billy MacLellan) claims. Sure.

Normal is in fact in bed with the Yakuza, aka the Japanese Mafia. Mayor Henry Winkler helped spearhead a deal with the badmen that led them to house cash, gold bars, and military-grade weapons for the mafia in exchange for a financial windfall that assures the citizens live comfortably, free to curse, fight, drink, smoke, and earn enough take-home pay to cover next month’s mortgage payment. Ulysses comes to realize this when he responds to a call of a bank robbery conducted by two alley-dwellers (Brendan Fletcher and Reena Jolly), who discover some of the Yakuza gold. Suddenly, the deputies and Mayor want Ulysses dead in addition to the robbers.

Odenkirk is so blandly affable in Normal that he hardly leaves an impression. His time with Reena Jolly’s Lori feels truncated to the point that it’s as if more moving scenes between the two were left on the cutting room floor.

The sad fact is that Ben Wheatley’s Normal is simply not that funny and not that interesting. The humor prompted Hank Hill-esque chuckles out of me, and the crime drama angle is never explored beyond the idea that a small town sold its soul. Having lived in small, rural enclaves for the better part of eight years (after being born and raised in the western suburbs of Chicago), I could see this story being probed from the perspective of a lifelong resident, in conjunction to Odenkirk’s fish-out-of-water sheriff. I could see this story being told from a sheriff, who has grown weary of the town caving to financial and mob-related pressures, and stages a war from within as a response. I could envision a plethora of better angles for Normal than the milquetoast one we got: a story so remarkably unremarkable that it couldn’t even find a place to include the Baha Men song of the same name.

Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Reena Jolly, Ryan Allen, Lena Headey, Henry Winkler, Billy MacLellan, Brendan Fletcher, Peter Shinkoda, and Jess McLeod. Directed by: Ben Wheatley.