Centers on a temporary small-town sheriff who uncovers dark mysteries after a local bank robbery.

Bob Odenkirk seems to be making a late career shift into action movies, perhaps following Liam Neeson’s lead, and he follows up ‘Nobody’ and its sequel with the also plainly named ‘Normal’, though it should be noted his efforts are more comedic than what most of Neeson’s have been. In ‘Normal’, so called as it is set in the fictional town of Normal, Minnesota, he plays an interim sheriff who arrives in town after the death of the previous sheriff, uncovering a conspiracy that puts his life in danger. It is directed by Ben Wheatley, who has developed an interesting and varied filmography after breaking through with largely gritty British horror movies.

Minnesota seems to be a popular choice for quirky stories with quirky characters (blame ‘Fargo’ I guess!), and so it is here as Sheriff Ulysses (Odenkirk) arrives and starts to familiarise himself with his new surroundings and the various townsfolk. These include the Mayor, played by Henry Winkler, and the local bartender Moira, played by Lena Headey, with the more interesting, and some might say unusual, residents being 2 Japanese security guards who work at the local bank. This is where the action kicks off as a botched bank robbery draws Ulysses and his deputies to the local bank, where Ulysses discovers more than he bargained for, setting off a chain of events where just about everybody in the town picks up weapons and essentially goes to war.

I went to see ‘Normal’ after a day in the office and it did everything I expected it to do in helping me unwind. It’s 90 minutes long, comedically violent with some fun performances and a solid enough script that can sustain the runtime, without being anything that’s ever going to end up on a best of list, which is exactly what I was looking for. Wheatley is a pretty decent action director as he has shown before most prominently with ‘Free Fire’, and he keeps the action going here with some nice needle drops and over the top death scenes.

So I enjoyed ‘Normal’ and its nicely calibrated level of throwaway cinematic escapism.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Ben Wheatley

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

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt31195136/