Normal – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Ben Wheatley
Writers – Derek Kolstad, Bob Odenkirk
Stars – Bob Odenkirk, Ryan Allen, Billy MacLellan

The irony is intentional, and perhaps all too obvious.  There is nothing normal in Normal – not that one would know at the outset. Ignoring what seems to set the scene on an alternative film set in the violent world of Japanese crime syndicates, our main focus and narrative reveals a sleepy mid-American town that could be anywhere, to which an even sleepier (or so it seems) sheriff arrives.  He seems to have his own emotional baggage, and this temporary appointment, it becomes clear, is not a promotion but rather an escape from a past he would rather forget.   There are touches of the now thirty-year-old Coen Brothers classic Fargo (1996), and the sheriff hero, Ulysses Richardson (Bob Odenkirk), has some of the gait and dawdle of Frances McDormand’s heavily pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson. Ambling along, seeing everything and working it all out. So, this is no Schwarzenegger Terminator or Bruce Willis Die Hard.  Instead, it shuffles along, or appears to, like a sheriff comes to The Waltons (1971-82). Between the offers of cakes and coffee to the sheriff, we almost imagine hearing someone call ‘Good Night John-Boy.’

American cinema has a strong tradition of the quiet sheriff hero – one thinks of the classic Zinnerman’s High Noon (1952) as US Marshal Will Kane faces off with outlaw Frank Miller. Not the action-packed shoot out of Hollywood norm that audiences had been used to, instead, the focus was on moral challenges.  Indeed, Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns gave us a strong legacy of the quiet, even sullen, outlaw hero, who also faces moral dilemmas. Despite its sleepy front, there is more to this sleepy town of Normal than meets the eye.  There are, as we know, difficulties in the sleepiest of hollows and serpents beneath the nicest flower, and Normal is no different. A ham-fisted bank raid, which realises little in the way of cash, instead reveals an explosion of the town’s hidden dark secrets – secrets in which every local Blueberry Mum has bought into, hook, line and sinker.   And from apple-pie comfort, we are whisked back to those only now relevant scenes with the Japanese criminals. They have been stashing their loot over many years in Normal’s Bank – and everyone locally benefits – except the sheriff, the two would-be robbers and a desperate daughter of the most recent town sheriff.  So, from the ‘calm’ of Fargo, we are thrust into the maelstrom of Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), but Django on steroids.  It is a blood bath, but a hilarious one.  Blood, guts and body parts fly off in all directions, all in an edge-of-the-seat feat of cinematic pace and editing.  It is exhilarating and yet fantastical.  It makes for an unlikely, but entirely satisfying, viewing.