Normal

For Sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk), his provisional posting to the quaint Midwestern American town of Normal was meant to be a welcome respite from both his marital woes and recent moral injuries in the line of duty. But when a botched bank robbery interrupts the municipality’s tranquil pace, a sordid secret is inadvertently exposed and Ulysses learns that the town is anything but its namesake. Suddenly everyone is trying to shoot the sheriff, even his own deputies, and our put-upon policeman must rely on his affable mettle and some motley crooks if he is to survive the night.

Little time is wasted in chambering the quirky players of director Ben Wheatley’s homespun shoot-em-up, based on a story by Odenkirk and screenwriter Derek Kolstad (John Wick). Its first gunshot rings out like a starter pistol to a rip-roaring turkey shoot as Odenkirk thrillingly evades and explodes a lively ensemble of bloodthirsty constituents, demonstrating his effortless prowess at playing a cordial badass (see Nobody, also written by Kolstad). Among the heavies and heels are wickedly fun turns from Lena Headey to Henry Winkler — not to mention a host of Canucks — but I haven’t even mentioned how the Yakuza figure into all of this. And believe me, they do.

Further colliding the folksy darkness of Fargo with the conspiratorial bedlam of Hot Fuzz, as well as invoking the taut firefights of Wheatley’s own Free Fire (recipient of the 2016 Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award), Normal is a double-barrelled shotgun blast of bloody mayhem that sizzles with the splendour of a lit stick of dynamite. Brace for its booms!

PETER KUPLOWSKY