Title – Normal (2025)

Director – Ben Wheatley (High Rise)

Cast – Bob Odenkirk, Lena Headey, Henry Winkler, Billy MacLellan

Plot – Sent to the small Minnesota township of Normal, fill-in sheriff Ulysses Richardson (Odenkirk) quickly discovers that this quiet town isn’t what it appears to be on face value.

“Small town. Big secret”

Review by Eddie on 29/07/2026

Continuing to prove to us all that he’s one of the biggest filmmaking enigmas working today, British director Ben Wheatley turns in another “almost” film in Normal, a tongue in cheek actioner that takes cues from old Western staples, as it finds Bob Odenkirk’s very Nobody like sheriff Ulysses Richardson battling it out in the small Minnesota town of the films title.

Announcing himself in a huge way with his cult British classic Kill List all the way back in 2011, Wheatley has consistently been teasing audiences with his potential in a wide array of films both terrible and good, with Normal one of his more forgettably enjoyable offerings, that still feels like a bit of a waste of time and talent overall.

Written by Odenkirk in collaboration with Nobody writer Derek Kolstad, Normal never attempts to do anything we haven’t seen before even if the duos script is far more comedically focussed than one might initially expect as we are introduced to the new world of Richardson’s temporary gig that quickly turns into an over the top Hot Fuzz like battle of survival against the entire township.

Everything here is very slight, our characters are wafer thin, there’s little ambition and things just come and go narratively without much fanfare or time to gestate, making one wonder what the attraction of making Normal was in the first place? Especially when there’s some genuine talent involved in bringing the whole thing to life.

Finding success in his first go arounds as a surprise action star in the first Nobody, Odenkirk has tried to replicate that performance twice now with the little loved Nobody 2 and now Normal, with audiences seemingly uninterested in continuing to support Saul’s evolution into a geriatric one-man army.

I can’t deny that there’s joys to be found from watching Odenkirk launching endless barrages of dynamite into dim-witted crowds of criminals or battling it out with a having a blast Henry Winkler but there’s also only so far those slight joys can take a film like Normal if it’s so perfectly content with being so pedestrian in most of its delivery.

For talented performers and creators like Odenkirk and Wheatley, Normal feels like a cop out when we all know they can and should be putting their names to products with far more reasons to get excited.

Final Say –

A fine minor distraction, Normal is more of the same from the new era of the Odenkirk John Wick landscape, making for a watchable if highly forgettable genre mash-up.

2 1/2 noisy jackets out of 5