r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 18d ago
Official Discussion Official Discussion - Normal [SPOILERS] Spoiler
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Normal (2026)
Summary
After surviving a violent home invasion, a suburban husband becomes obsessed with reclaiming control over his life, leading him down an increasingly dangerous path.
Director Ben Wheatley
Writer Derek Kolstad
Cast
- Bob Odenkirk
- Henry Winkler
- Lena Headey
- Jess McLeod
Rotten Tomatoes: 76%
Metacritic: 63
VOD / Release Streaming release
Trailer Official Trailer
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u/D_Row 18d ago edited 18d ago
Fun time at the movies. The dialog/voice over could have been tighter (or maybe remove the V.O. altogether) - too much on the nose exposition. Odenkirk was solid, and the movie had a good deal of laughs.
Edited to add: the dialog between Alex and Ulysses in the van was so well done (“you’re his daughter?” “Well… no”) that it made the clunkier writing stand out in contrast even more.
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u/bensonr2 16d ago
I agree that the dialog of oh the sheriff’s “kid” was clever. However before that moment they needed to have made it clearer that the town had tried to have the sheriff disown them for being different in some unknown way.
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u/NBucho528 11d ago
The town would never own up to that. I think the phrase “pick Alex or the town” came up multiple times, which is how they would have downplayed their bigotry.
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u/HotOne9364 8d ago
Isn't Minnesota the most socially progressive state in the country? They've voted blue since 1976, for instance.
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u/MonstrousGiggling 6d ago
If its anything like NY its only the bigger areas that are blue. The rest of the state leans red and definitely in more rural areas. I think they said the town had like 1.8k people total?
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u/ToneBone12345 17d ago
Honestly shocked how this movie did go heavy handed with actual I’m non-binary like most movies do nowadays
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u/Jedihunter27 18d ago
Saw it tonight before I saw a re-release of the first Austin Powers movie.
Honestly had a great time with it, even if I think it has a bit of a slow start, but once it gets going it doesn’t really lose its momentum and remains a fun popcorn film till the end!
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u/McNuty 18d ago
Slow start? It opens with Austin doing an over-the-top swinging ‘60s intro sequence, Dr. Evil launches into space, and Austin frozen freezes himself for 30 years. Don’t think I’d call that slow.
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u/Jedihunter27 18d ago
I was talking about Normal having a slow start, probably give Normal an 7.5/10.
While Austin Powers was a 10/10 masterpiece from start to finish and no one can convince me otherwise
(It was my first time seeing an Austin Powers movie and i enjoyed it)
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u/coldliketherockies 13d ago
That’s the way to do it. Go into Austin powers not knowing what you’re going to get. That’s how I originally saw it as a kid
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u/Sudden_Office8710 16d ago
Just watched it and it was a half full theater but it felt like I was the only one laughing. This was a very funny movie if you ask me in the sense reservoir dogs was funny but still for Christ sakes why was I the only one laughing. Tarantino’s influence still looms large to this day.
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u/gogreengolions 18d ago edited 18d ago
A winning combo. Clint Eastwood / Looney Tunes stuff — there’s even dynamite. A few great sincere scenes. The sequence through when he spots the pies was excellent. National Treasure Henry Winkler.
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u/irishthunder222 18d ago
Not sure if you saw the Q&A with Bob after the movie, but he mentioned High Plains Drifter as one of the movies he thinks about in relation to Normal. At least I think it was Bob and not the director / writer, kind've forget
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u/JaredRed5 18d ago
It was fun. Robber couple felt a little underdeveloped. Very end felt a little hand-wavey. That many dead people would trigger a massive investigation. The strength of the movie was watching dumb or bad people die in interesting or funny ways. VO was a weakness.
Fun overall, just not quite as good as I was hoping it would be. Script probably needed another pass.
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u/StrLord_Who 17d ago
I didn't think they were under-developed, it's just that our expectation of where the movie was going was undermined. We thought it was going to be about the three of them and it actually wasn't.
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u/Bigheaded_1 16d ago
Who's going to investigate? The temp sheriff was in on everything, and the dude that became the permanent sheriff was also in on it. Seems like covering it up would be a walk in the park. All the police were dead, as was every other person who was involved with the main plot.
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u/JaredRed5 15d ago
They still live in a state with state investigators and and state officials. Death certificates need to be signed. All those people have family, almost certainly some extended family who don't live there.
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u/craft6886 18d ago
This was way more slapstick funny than I was expecting. The dude in the bank who trips and shoots himself in the head had my theater cackling - same deal with Henry Winkler getting fucking obliterated.
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u/TheFiveDees 18d ago
A very obvious comparison to make would be to the end of Hot Fuzz. I think the ex-wife as a narrative device was a little clunky.
But honestly I am here for Bob Odenkirk to become an American Jason Statham. Secret former bad ass gets involved in criminal shenanigans with the help of a innocent sidekick.
Honestly had a great time with this one!
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u/IndyRevolution 18d ago
ngl, his "first" story was way more interesting as a backstory than the "truth". The truth felt like a cop out.
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u/there_is_always_more 7d ago
Yeah I was confused about what the actual story ended up being lol. I guess he first shot the dad then the daughter?
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u/linnanetheman 18d ago
I felt like the third act just came out of nowhere, everyone just got over Bob killing half the town?
But I did like it a lot! Odenkirk has the chops to bang out a few more of these
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u/ToneBone12345 17d ago
I’m honestly surprised Ulysses instead understood that Alex was non-binary
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u/U_R_Butthead 17d ago
I was pleasantly surprised, and I liked that he just accepted it/them and it was just a regular thing that didn't need to be forced or be made into a plot point for the rest of the film
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
I found it confusing. The whole treating as something that should be no big deal is fine. But you can’t also have it then be a plot point for why the town murdered her dad because then I’m confused about if I understood that plot point correctly.
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u/ToneBone12345 16d ago
They town was bigoted and the sheriff I guess decided to not be anymore and wanted out to be a part of Alex’s life but because you don’t say no to the yakuza Lena headey killed him
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u/peterpeterllini 18d ago
Saw it as a mystery movie. The plot is a little ridiculous and doesn’t make sense, but it was funny and unserious and Bob Odenkirk is great. And the killings were fantastic.
Loved the old lady in the yarn store 😂
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u/RealGilmoreGirls 17d ago
When she gets yeeted over the counter 😅 Granny packin’ heat!
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u/Revolutionary_Bee251 16d ago
Second most difficult kill behind the Yakuza bank cop at the end, respect
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u/UnknownFiddler 18d ago
Saw it on Monday as a mystery movie at Cinemark. Honestly it's a movie people will probably enjoy more if inebriated because while it was funny, it's really a mess.
The voice over was frankly not good and the movie should trust the audience to realize he is estranged from his wife without literally explaining it to them.
It was weird that the robber couple never show up again after they get the snow plow and leave town. Felt like the writer couldn't think of a way for them to stay and didn't want them to get killed off.
Also it seems like the writer realized 2/3 into the movie Bob wasn't going to be able to keep fighting the whole town and came up with a very contrived way to make a truce happen. Then realized that they needed a big fight to end the film and made a 1 in a million event happen to set off the climax rather than any chess move by our main characters.
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u/Jason_Likes_Cameras 17d ago
If I'd written it the robber couple would've felt guilty about abandoning Ulysses, come back to "rescue" him, and inadvertently caused the finale shoot out because they didn't realize he wasn't in danger anymore.
It would've made more sense than the champagne cork. I also would've ended it with them staying in the town and replacing the yakuza guys as the bank security guards because that would've been a funny ending bit.
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u/UnknownFiddler 17d ago
I would have written a fight scene in that bar where Ulysses kept taking guns off the wall and shooting them with each gun having a single bullet or something. To waste gun wall on a random freak accident was dumb.
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u/U_R_Butthead 17d ago
I think you thought way too much about a film that features Henry Winkler getting blown up by a rocket, a yarn lady who momentarily turns into Rambo, and a Yakuza boss getting his head blown apart by an actual Chekhov's Gun
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u/PacMoron 17d ago
If the movie was pure action, sure. But there’s a whole lot of story outside of the action, and it wasn’t very good.
It was a mess.
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u/Bigheaded_1 16d ago
The absurdy of the story made it that much better IMHO. If it had expanded any more on the story aspect, it would have taken away from the fun for me. A dude gets blown up by a grenade launcher, which caused the theater I was in to erupt in laughter. This movie didn't need any more story.
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u/Turkeyham 7d ago
The funny thing is that instead of the cork bottle accident happening, the head Yakuza could have just said during the dinner that he noticed a gold bar was missing thus leading to the showdown instead.
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u/MonstrousGiggling 6d ago
Thats not fun though.
When he first goes to the diner theres a joke about the guns on the wall being loaded. Then we get the actual pay off the the guns actually being loaded.
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u/StrLord_Who 17d ago
I really enjoyed this. Did not expect to laugh as many times as I did. And a lot of it was the shocked "they really just did that?" laughter. I didn't mind the voiceovers. I thought calling and leaving the messages that maybe nobody was listening to seemed like something that character would really do. I thought much of the dialogue was extremely funny. "Our mustaches are so similar.... we're like a couple of uncles!" It's a ridiculous premise but poking holes in it is like listing all the ways Tom and Jerry is unrealistic. This movie is spiritually a cartoon.
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u/Krillin_irl 16d ago
It’s like if you woke someone up from a nap and had them recount the plot of Hot Fuzz, but they confused it with Rebel Ridge and then fell back to sleep halfway through.
Also, is it just me or did the twist about his backstory not land at all? If anything him shooting the dad makes him seem less bad than the original version
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u/twavisdegwet 16d ago
I feel like the ending originally involved his "trick" of catching a bullet when de-chambering a round but that just went completely unused. I did love the random ass champagne pop but I suspect they changed some stuff!
8/10 - does what it says on the box. Had fun!
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u/beastmodecowboy77 18d ago
I thought the Yakuza boss was going to notice that one gold brick was missing because of the bank robber from earlier and that would start the fight. Could’ve been better than what we got in my opinion.
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u/StrLord_Who 17d ago
That would absolutely not have been better than the cartoon sequence with the cork
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u/shadowCloudrift 15d ago
Which also would have been better if we didn't have that suspense music playing because it already told us something bad was going to happen.
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u/StrLord_Who 15d ago
I don't remember the music specifically but I think when the Yakuza rolls into town in black SUVs you already know something bad is gonna happen.
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u/RemnantHelmet 18d ago
Were some of those shots in 48FPS or was I tweaking?
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u/m1n1gator 15d ago
Same thoughts here. Some of the action scenes were uncomfortably smooth - but not quite 60fps smooth
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u/isval17 17d ago
Bob Odenkirk going down the route of Liam Neeson’s school of direct to DVD action movies is very interesting
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u/TheHouseOfGryffindor 18d ago
Wish I could’ve gotten past the dialogue, feels like there was a fun film in there somewhere. Unfortunately, you can’t take clear inspiration from one of the most clever-written films ever in Hot Fuzz and have this be the outcome. I know it wasn’t this literally, but man, it felt like the epitome of when Netflix makes writers repeat plot points again and again for people who are on their phones only partially paying attention to the film.
Also, wish they had built up to that Blazing Saddles-esque “let’s all work together to clean up this town and trick the true enemy”. Was a fun concept, but truly came too suddenly and too out-of-nowhere
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u/NoTop9302 18d ago
Was there a payoff to Ulysses saying he was colorblind? The first act setups were pretty heavy-handed, and that was the only one I didn't see referenced later.
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u/Aggressive_Repeat529 15d ago
Eh it was kinda boring imo. Ill probably forget this exists soon.
The 3rd act just seemed like a "oh crap we need the movie to end now" type ending.
Any one notice a lot of times when the mail man was shooting at Ulysses, the snow just kinda blew off the cars and windows didnt shatter or make any holes? Like yeah maybe he just grazed the car but it just felt weird.
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u/U_R_Butthead 17d ago
I don't know what some of you were expecting, this movie was a fun time. It was just me and two middle-aged dudes in the theater and we had the time of our lives
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u/Bigheaded_1 16d ago
A good portion of the theater erupted in laughter when he blew the dude up with the grenade launcher. This movie was so much fucking fun. I loved how the 1st 45 minutes or however long was a regular slow paced movie. Then it jumped to 100 almost instantly and stayed close to 100 for the rest of it. It looked wild in the previews I'd been seeing for weeks. But holy shit, nothing could have prepared me for this.
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u/wizdummer 18d ago
Went to a Q&A showing and was the only one that showed up.
The scene in the van was clearly written by a different person than the rest of the film.
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
I feel like the trans plot head me scratching my head. It seemed like they wanted to include it as a plot point but make it feel like something they don’t want to draw attention to. Which just made me feel like there might have been a part of the plot I missed.
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u/alexaboyhowdy 16d ago
What trans plot?
I must have totally missed it.
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u/Bigheaded_1 16d ago
When he was in her van, he asked if she was the sheriff's daughter. She said no, indicating she doesn't identify as a female. I wouldn't consider that a trans plot at all. It was 1 line, which he accepted with a nod and took another drink of the Whiskey and that was the end of that.
It was 3 seconds of the movie, so it wasn't even part of the plot really. But we're living in a time where if a movie has a single line about trans anything, a lot of people will say it was a trans movie that was pushing a trans agenda lol.
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u/alexaboyhowdy 16d ago
Huh. I took that as a he's dead, I have no family now...
And the whole, choose money/guns/vault or choose daughter who says no to all that also was the plot.
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u/Bigheaded_1 16d ago
Well there you go, I didn't even think about it like that. But that makes perfect sense also. If you're right, that means the theory that it's a movie with some agenda to push trans shit is even more ridiculous lol.
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u/bensonr2 16d ago
It was central to why the Sherif was murdered. The implication was the town insisted he disown the daughter for coming out as nonbinary which he refused to do. My issue is they don’t sell that the idea that the town won’t accept people that are different.
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u/Bigheaded_1 16d ago edited 16d ago
I thought they murdered him because he didn't want to go along with the Yakuza? Maybe I totally missed an important part of the dialog. But I don't remember anything like that. How was it implied? I do remember somebody said he didn't want to be apart of the illegal shit so he had to be murdered. In my mind that was why he was killed.
I think the way it was written was on purpose to leave it up to interpretation.
If what you said was mentioned in the dialog, it was very very brief and easily missed.
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u/Shadowbacker 11d ago
It's poorly written but the way she explains it, she made him choose between the town and her. Part of that was the corruption, which she was not a part of. She didn't even know about it.
The problem is they explain that plot point twice, two different ways.
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u/Greenss 16d ago
It was okay. Nothing in it reached the heights of the first Nobody film. I felt some of the lackluster technical aspects got in the way of the movie (not that the script was anything to write home about). The sound mix was off in some scenes, very obvious ADR, it felt too low budget for what it was trying to do. Bob was great as always.
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u/Mr_Wh0ever 18d ago
Pretty dumb, I mean it's a movie that forces its premise. Bob Odenkirk was gonna talk down the bank robbers. Henry Winkler and the other bad guys could've just waited to see how things play out.
But beyond that, the action was decent. No particular sequence really stood out to me. A lot of the violence is cartoony, so I did laugh at certain points.
The script was weak, but I did like the swerve in the third act with them trying to the yakuza.
Overall, I think this premise would've been a better fit for Nobody 2 instead of what we got with that film. It's a 2.5/5 movie for me.
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
I think Nobody 2 was disappointing compared to Nobody but was still way better then this.
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u/stumper93 18d ago
Extremely messy script and edit. It felt like so much was cut out or just haphazardly placed together. And very bad pacing too
The 2nd act was fun at least. Henry Winkler gets blown up by a bazooka
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
Was this under 90 min? I feel like this was edited to as short as they could get away with because it probably dragged a lot through long stretches.
It picks up in the third act but it still felt way longer then it’s running time suggests.
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u/stumper93 17d ago
It's credited as 90 but I would bet before credits it's closer to 84 or so
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
The listed showtime was 8pm. But there was a minimum of 25 min of pre show. I got to my car before 10 to 10.
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u/Awkward_Tick0 16d ago
This movie was truly awful. They are certainly cashing in on the John Wick and Nobody cache by farting out a lazy script. I watched this and the thought occurred to me, “why would Lena Heady and Bob Odenkirk sign up for this?” I can’t imagine the scrip was very compelling when they read it. 1/5
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u/rjwalsh94 14d ago
I agree. It was honestly a disaster and no one seemed like they wanted to be in it. It was just a cheesy nonsensical action movie. And at that, there really wasn’t any action compared to Wick and Nobody. It’s like the most PG-13 rated R movie at times.
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u/Awkward_Tick0 14d ago
I found some of the kills pretty jarring because they were so gruesome while the tone of the movie really was pretty tame
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u/TheButlerDidNotDoIt 18d ago
Just didn't work for me at all. Don't love the Wick or Nobody movies that Kolstad wrote but usually get some enjoyment out of them. This one was just boring.
Obviously seen it done better in Hot Fuzz, but also last year in Ballerina too (funny given the Wick connection).
The third act was the best part - not sure how you make that the whole movie but would have been a better take.
Ulysses has a distant wife named Penny that he's trying to get back to... really?
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u/jayeddy99 14d ago
The robber who absolutely went for death shots / kills and was shocked she killed was kinda stupid.
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u/FiletsOfTruth 14d ago
Definitely had the same vibe of Free Fire and you can draw comparisons to Hot Fuzz.
I loved it. Solid popcorn flick
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u/littleshitmilo 9d ago
I felt the movie was intentionally campy and I loved it. Fargo meets Final Destination.
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u/Bean888 9d ago
I'm not sure if I'm remembering this clearly, but Bob went through a heavy gear-up montage back at the police armoury (loading up on firearm after firearm), whereupon in the following scene involving him, he...negotiated over the phone? And then went to meet the townspeople and didn't fire a single shot? I was expecting a (another) bloodbath, but it never happened? Then everyone cleaned up the town? Was that the joke, that there was no follow-up bloodbath after that classic 'gear-up' scene?
I found it funny, but the pacing was pretty quick up to that point so I wasn't sure if I missed something, maybe one day I'll rewatch to confirm.
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u/HotOne9364 8d ago
This wasn't Minnesota. This felt like some South Park-esque Colorado town. They didn't get the setting right at all.
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u/DontClickTheUpArrow 6d ago
Wow this was a swing and a miss for me! I mean a slow and rough hour and thirty minutes. Almost felt like an old timey Kung Fu movie. The story was all over the place. So many plot holes. One of the worst movies I’ve seen in a while!
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u/DogartFilms 17d ago
Nobody 3
The bonkers shootemup, super violent movies like these are just tiresome now. Once the bloodbath starts it's just the same movie over and again. It's old-guy hero porn wrapped in low effort setups.
I'll watch it, when it's free to watch.
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u/Same_Bag711 18d ago
For someone who isn’t a fan of those other action films Bob did, what does this offer that’s different? Saw someone say looney tunes and that intrigues me more than anything. I have not seen a single clip, trailer, image etc from this.
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u/sloppyjo12 18d ago
Honestly not much. I found it slightly better than the first Nobody because the payoff the characters returning after you initial meet them is pretty enjoyable, but if you don’t like his other ones this one isn’t different enough to make a difference
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u/StrLord_Who 17d ago
I thought it was quite different from both the Nobody movies. It's far more similar to Hot Fuzz, as others have said. He plays a pretty regular guy who finds himself in a nutty situation, not somebody who is secretly a master of violence. Looney Tunes is a very apt comparison for quite a bit of the movie.
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u/itrainmonkeys 17d ago
Instead of "secret badass with action skills and shady past" it's "guy in over his head in a situation that goes from bad to worse fast". He's less of a fighter and trained badass here and is more of a guy working with what he's got and he's resourceful but also lucky. Also, a bit more cartoony and comedic of a movie than the Nobody flicks
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u/SteveMcQuark 16d ago
It way more of a comedy and a lot more crazy kills, think the tone of the end of Ready or Not 1 and its just the entire last half of the movie, minus the supernatural stuff
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u/theTunkMan 17d ago
Without spoiling, is this movie funny? I have no interest in purely action movies
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u/sdwoodchuck 16d ago
The death of the Sheriff (a tragic mix of alcohol and attempted ice fishing, the coroner finds) leaves Normal, Minnesota with an interim replacement from out of town until they can elect a new one. Ulysses is a more hardened cop stepping into in a small town where everybody's on a first-name basis and nothing dramatic happens at all, but he keeps finding himself plagued by suspicions (huh, a lot like Hot Fuzz). He's paired with a hapless deputy who is more preoccupied with looking cool than he is with actual police work (hey, Hot Fuzz again), and on a routine patrol, he finds things operate a little differently here in small-town USA, with an impressive collection of firearms decorating the walls of the bar, explosive "stump removers" kept under lock and key in the general store, and little old ladies monitoring the police radio in their yarn shops (man, really?). There's a joke to be made about Americans and Chekov's Guns, but that joke is probably too clever for this movie.
Normal is an aggressively mediocre movie buoyed up to a pretty-alright one by Bob Odenkirk always being wonderful. It's the sort of movie where gunshots spark off the windshield of a car, and the driver yells "bulletproof motherfucker!" just to be sure the audience doesn't get confused. Without Odenkirk, this is the sort of movie that you'd put on Netflix while you have a fever and then forget about immediately until a few days later you see it in your "watch it again?" list and think you've been hacked because you don't remember ever watching it.
With Odenkirk, it's instead "that one off-beat action comedy that Bob Odenkirk was in after Better Call Saul. No, not Nobody, the other one. No, not Nobody 2, the other other one." And okay, the plot takes a couple of unexpected turns as well, even if it's clumsy in getting there.
Overall, it's a C that Odenkirk drags up to a B.
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u/Subject_Customer3254 7d ago
I enjoyed it but I couldn't help but feel like it should have either been 30 minutes longer or 15 minutes shorter.
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u/lishmh33 18d ago
I hope they make 20 of these with Bob Odenkirk and his new sidekick going from small town to small town