PREMISE
A temporary small-town sheriff uncovers VERY dark mysteries about a small Minnesota town after a local bank robbery.
THE GOOD STUFF
BOB- It’s difficult to review this movie in any way without having direct comparisons to the nobody films that started this whole Bob Odenkirk action hero thing. Odenkirk has somehow pulled off the ability to play a badass character who both knows what he’s doing (like in the nobody films) and a character who’s truly scared of dangerous situations and is flying by the seat of his pants. I can say rather comfortably after seeing this film that Bob Odenkirk might be the very best of the “geriatric” action stars that we’ve had. He’s not the best actor that’s been a geriatric action star (although he’s pretty close) he doesn’t look the part no matter how good a shape he gets himself in, and he’s not at all the best fight sequence action star like a Jason Statham or Jackie Chan would be. He is a perfectly versatile relatable Everyman to highly ludicrous action scenes scenarios.
THE 2ND ACT- The first act of this movie plays as a relatively effective mystery. A twin peaks kind of roll out to see exactly what’s wrong with this small Minnesota town. Once we get that out of the way, the second act of this movie gets really violent, and looks really good. What makes the action of this film satisfying is that there’s no real experts in the town of Normal, Minnesota. All of these people are just normal untrained citizens protecting their town for all the wrong reasons. Think of the third act of the John Wick spin-off ballerina to see what I’m kind of talking about when it comes to how the action fits in the second act. All this is done really well and it all looks really atmospheric and cool.
THE BAD STUFF
LENA HEADEY- Once upon a time Lena Headey would just pop up in films like this play a small role like this, steal a scene or two like she does here and then just disappear. That was okay before game of thrones. Because that show has happened, roles like this seem to be a gigantic waste of her time, and most importantly talents. There was so much potential in this character to have a bigger role than what she does, and her place in the story is really kind of odd. You can cut out her character and nothing would change within this story at all. That’s really a shame.
THE FINAL SHOOTOUT- I’m going to go as far as to say that this may have been rewritten or re-edited or something, because as opposed to the events of the second act, the grand finale action sequence of this film felt plenty rushed. Even by an action movie of this caliber, the setup was just kind of sloppy and the camera work was entirely too kinetic. As opposed to all of the action from the second act which all looked atmospheric and cool, this one feels chopped up and rushed.
THE UGLY STUFF
DIALOGUE- In plenty of reviews on this site I’ve gone off on how much I hate “on the nose” dialogue. And it’s really disappointing whenever it’s so happens to pop up. For me, it’s worse than having bad CGI, or corny music, or even bad cinematography. “On the nose” dialogue is bad enough to completely rob you of your suspension of disbelief. When it comes to action movies like this it can be played for laughs, it truly can…. I just can’t remember the last time that that happened.
When one liners are good its because the writing is good. When character interactions are done in a goofy way at an inappropriate time that does make the audience laugh, it’s because the both the actors are good… and the writing is good. When we are getting multiple monologues about characters backstories that are spoken in a way that regular human beings wouldn’t speak like….and when multiple characters do that without being prompted to just to move the story along…That means the dialogue is atrocious. And the dialogue is really atrocious in this film.
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I respect the fact that this film really did not want to come off as a Coke Zero version of John wick. This really took a swing in a lot of areas and a lot of those swings didn’t connect but you have to respect this film for trying. It is legitimately funny in moments as well, and that should be mentioned here. This had waves of goodness and badness. Overall it was a decent enough flick.
I have a good feeling that we’re going to see a lot more of Bob Odenkirk’s action era, and that’s a plus for everybody. We do need more films like this. But we just need those films to be better than this.Â
NORMAL is in theaters now.
