Bob Odenkirk in "Normal."
Magnolia Pictures
After his iconic turns as Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, it would seem that Bob Odenkirk has done a complete 180 in his career by starring in the action-packed crime comedies Nobody, Nobody 2 and now, Normal.
And yes, while Odenkirk’s new movie has the same sort of hardcore action including lots of bullets, blood and a high body count as his Nobody films, he said that his character Ulysses Richardson’s attributes in Normal actually are rooted in his portrayal of Saul/Jimmy.
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“It’s really built out of Saul. If you break that character down into component parts and forget about the silly slickness of it — the comic aspect, because obviously that's how we got to know him in Breaking Bad — and look at him in Better Call Saul, he's earnest,” Odenkirk said in a recent Zoom conversation.
“Even though it seems like Saul’s just a scammer — if you watch Breaking Bad, he just seems like a con man who lies and has fun doing it — but when you see him in Better Call Saul, his heart is outside of his chest and you go, ‘No, no, no. He’s fighting for dignity and respect,’” Odenkirk added. “He gets his ass handed to him constantly, but he keeps fighting. He never quits and he's really clever.”
In Normal, which opens Friday in theaters nationwide, Odenkirk’s Ulysses Richardson is a lawman haunted by a fatal incident in his past who comes to the remote town of Normal, Minn., to fill in as an interim sheriff after the town’s longtime top cop dies.
Bob Odenkirk in "Normal."
Magnolia Pictures
Everything at first seems, well, normal, in the friendly “yeah, you betcha” environs in the Land of 10,000 Lakes as Ulysses is warmly greeted by the likes of Normal barkeep Moira (Lena Heady), Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler), and sheriff’s deputies Blaine (Ryan Allen) and Mike (Billy MacLean). But when an attempted bank robbery by a couple of out-of-towners (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) goes awry, it exposes a big secret that the residents of Normal have been hiding and Ulysses is smack-dab in the middle of it.
As such, Ulysses is faced with a choice of siding with the corruption of the community or fight for what is right no matter how high the odds are stacked against him. Of course, by doing that, he’ll need to free himself of the shackles of his tortured past in order to confront the do-or-die situation head-on.
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“At first, Ulysses doesn’t know what's happening, but he knows something's up, but he's also trying not to look because there's some part of him that's been damaged and he doesn't trust his own instincts anymore,” Odenkirk explained. “He just wants to avoid engagement with people and with the challenge of life. And then, he's forced into this crazy circumstance to engage with this conspiracy and the dangers of that conspiracy.”
Directed by Ben Wheatley and also starring Peter Shinkoda and Jess McLeod, Normal has a big connection to Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody films in that the screenplay for his latest action crime comedy was written by Derek Kolstad, the celebrated John Wick creator who penned the scripts for Nobody and Nobody 2 (along with Aaron Rabin).
However, Normal is different from the Nobody films in a couple of different ways, first in how Odenkirk collaborated with Kolstad on the film’s story, which the scribe then fleshed out into a screenplay. In addition, the pacing is different than the Nobody films as he and Kolstad leaned heavily into the build-up of the plot in the first half of the film, which turns into bat-s—t crazy, ultraviolent free-for-all in the second half.
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Besides, Odenkirk knows in his heart that he’s not built for a film that’s wall-to-wall action.
“I don’t think I’d be right for it, but also I’m not interested in doing an action film where all it is is fighting,” Odenkirk observed. "Some of the guys who do it are great at it, and they present a certain kind of archetype — and I'm not that. So, what can I bring to a film like that? It’s what I bring to the first part of Normal.”
Brendan Fletcher, Bob Odenkirk and Reena Jolly in "Normal."
Magnolia Pictures
The bonus — and it is a crucial bonus — is that Normal allowed Odenkirk to instill the same kind of regular guy relatability in Ulysses that helped ground his Hutch Mansell in the Nobody movies. The relatability factor is something that Odenkirk — who is also a veteran writer whose early credits include Saturday Night Live and the underappreciated sketch comedy series The Ben Stiller Show and Mr. Show with Bob and David — is something strives for as an actor.
“I’m going to sound like a cocky a—hole, but I really comment from humility,” Odenkirk, 63, explained. “When I got Better Call Saul, I was like, ‘I shouldn’t be the lead in anything. I'm not young. I'm not handsome, you know?’ But then, I thought. ‘What about Humphrey Bogart? You know, he wasn't young and handsome, so I studied a lot of his films.
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As such, Odenkirk said, what he lacks to be a full-blown action star he tries to make up for in dimension and relatability, which is why he loved to bring that approach to his Nobody films and Normal.
“Bringing dimensional characters into these films, people appreciate that,” Odenkirk enthused. “Seeing a guy like Hutch taking the garbage cans out and missing the garbage truck in Nobody or where in Nobody 2, he books his kids into the room that isn’t right for their age now, audiences relate to these things. In the case of Normal, I think I have a character in Ulysses who's more like me than any character I've played.”
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