by Josh Sewell
Normal
(Rated R for strong bloody violence and language. Opens in theaters on April 17.)
When Bob Odenkirk became an out-of-nowhere action hero in 2021’s Nobody, it was funny for a second. But then audiences quickly realized: no, the guy who played sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul for more than a decade is shockingly good at playing a brutal assassin. (In fact, getting into fighting shape kept a massive heart attack from killing him in real life that same year.)
However, after that film and its 2025 sequel, the element of surprise is no longer a factor in Odenkirk’s genre shift. Perhaps that’s why Normal, the new action flick hitting theaters this weekend, doesn’t pack a strong punch. It’s still engaging thanks to decent performances and director Ben Wheatley’s above-average flair for pyrotechnics, but there’s not a lot of meat on its bones.
Odenkirk plays Ulysses, interim sheriff of the titular Minnesota town. He took the job to get away from his troubled past, but an attempted bank robbery reveals a dark secret at the heart of his seemingly tranquil new community. Everyone is suddenly trying to kill him, so he must rely on his skills and wits if he’s going to survive the night.
Odenkirk is solid in the role, which makes sense considering he also co-wrote the screenplay with his Nobody collaborator Derek Kolstad. It’s only natural he’d want to craft a character that combines his experience from that series and the first season of Fargo, where he played a small-town cop who’s out of his depth.
Unfortunately, the result is a reheated combination of Fargo (the Coen brothers’ original) and John Wick (which Kolstad also wrote). While Odenkirk is fun to watch and the supporting cast (including Henry Winkler as Normal’s comically evil mayor) is intriguing, there’s not much here we haven’t seen before in other movies that did it a lot better.
The premise basically asks, “What if Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz was serious?” The disappointing answer is a generic action flick that’s far more interesting when it focuses on character development in the first act, before bullets start flying and the town explodes.
Grade: C
Hamlet
(Rated R for some bloody violence, suicide, brief drug use and language. Now playing in select theaters.)
There’s plenty of reasons William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Hamlet has been adapted so many times over the past 425 years, but it boils down to relatability. Granted, most of us can’t say we’re a prince pretending to go insane (or is it legit?) to see if our uncle murdered our dad to get with our mom, but we can understand a sense of betrayal that makes us question our reality. We also know the frustration of wondering if we can change our awful situation or if we’re only doomed to play a part in making it worse.
That’s also why the centuries-old play is so ripe for adaptation: you can mold its core elements to fit pretty much any era, country, culture, etc. Heck, one of the best versions involves cartoon lions (admittedly, it has a happier ending). The latest interpretation comes from director Aneil Karisa and screenwriter Michael Lesslie, whose modern staging is set within London’s elite South Asian community.
The basics remain the same: when Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) returns for his father’s (Avijit Dutt) funeral, he is stunned to discover his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) is marrying his newly widowed mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha). Visited by his father’s ghost, Hamlet learns Claudius orchestrated his brutal murder and spirals into a quest for vengeance that exposes the rot at the heart of the family’s empire and threatens his own sanity.
Shakespeare’s unabridged Hamlet runs about four hours, so Lesslie’s adaptation cuts/condenses about half of it, making it a streamlined, ultra-dark (even for a tragedy) look at Hamlet while his world falls apart – gradually at first, then with a final, horrifically violent implosion. His choices mostly work, though I’m sure hardcore purists will find plenty to take issue with.
Ahmed is phenomenal as Hamlet, and so is Malik as the villainous uncle. It’s refreshing to see the actor in such a complex, layered role considering he might still be best known to American audiences as the stereotypical terrorist leader in James Cameron’s True Lies.
However, the most thrilling aspect of this new version of Hamlet is its interpretation of the infamous “play within a play” – the narrative Hamlet uses to reveal to Claudius he knows the truth about his father’s death. In Karia’s reimagining, it becomes a wedding dance rather than a play, and the result is a breathtaking sequence that is incredibly beautiful and haunting at the same time.
Grade: B
(Rated R for strong bloody violence and language. Opens in theaters on April 17.)
When Bob Odenkirk became an out-of-nowhere action hero in 2021’s Nobody, it was funny for a second. But then audiences quickly realized: no, the guy who played sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul for more than a decade is shockingly good at playing a brutal assassin. (In fact, getting into fighting shape kept a massive heart attack from killing him in real life that same year.)
However, after that film and its 2025 sequel, the element of surprise is no longer a factor in Odenkirk’s genre shift. Perhaps that’s why Normal, the new action flick hitting theaters this weekend, doesn’t pack a strong punch. It’s still engaging thanks to decent performances and director Ben Wheatley’s above-average flair for pyrotechnics, but there’s not a lot of meat on its bones.
Odenkirk plays Ulysses, interim sheriff of the titular Minnesota town. He took the job to get away from his troubled past, but an attempted bank robbery reveals a dark secret at the heart of his seemingly tranquil new community. Everyone is suddenly trying to kill him, so he must rely on his skills and wits if he’s going to survive the night.
Odenkirk is solid in the role, which makes sense considering he also co-wrote the screenplay with his Nobody collaborator Derek Kolstad. It’s only natural he’d want to craft a character that combines his experience from that series and the first season of Fargo, where he played a small-town cop who’s out of his depth.
Unfortunately, the result is a reheated combination of Fargo (the Coen brothers’ original) and John Wick (which Kolstad also wrote). While Odenkirk is fun to watch and the supporting cast (including Henry Winkler as Normal’s comically evil mayor) is intriguing, there’s not much here we haven’t seen before in other movies that did it a lot better.
The premise basically asks, “What if Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz was serious?” The disappointing answer is a generic action flick that’s far more interesting when it focuses on character development in the first act, before bullets start flying and the town explodes.
Grade: C
(Rated R for some bloody violence, suicide, brief drug use and language. Now playing in select theaters.)
There’s plenty of reasons William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Hamlet has been adapted so many times over the past 425 years, but it boils down to relatability. Granted, most of us can’t say we’re a prince pretending to go insane (or is it legit?) to see if our uncle murdered our dad to get with our mom, but we can understand a sense of betrayal that makes us question our reality. We also know the frustration of wondering if we can change our awful situation or if we’re only doomed to play a part in making it worse.
That’s also why the centuries-old play is so ripe for adaptation: you can mold its core elements to fit pretty much any era, country, culture, etc. Heck, one of the best versions involves cartoon lions (admittedly, it has a happier ending). The latest interpretation comes from director Aneil Karisa and screenwriter Michael Lesslie, whose modern staging is set within London’s elite South Asian community.
The basics remain the same: when Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) returns for his father’s (Avijit Dutt) funeral, he is stunned to discover his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) is marrying his newly widowed mother Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha). Visited by his father’s ghost, Hamlet learns Claudius orchestrated his brutal murder and spirals into a quest for vengeance that exposes the rot at the heart of the family’s empire and threatens his own sanity.
Shakespeare’s unabridged Hamlet runs about four hours, so Lesslie’s adaptation cuts/condenses about half of it, making it a streamlined, ultra-dark (even for a tragedy) look at Hamlet while his world falls apart – gradually at first, then with a final, horrifically violent implosion. His choices mostly work, though I’m sure hardcore purists will find plenty to take issue with.
Ahmed is phenomenal as Hamlet, and so is Malik as the villainous uncle. It’s refreshing to see the actor in such a complex, layered role considering he might still be best known to American audiences as the stereotypical terrorist leader in James Cameron’s True Lies.
However, the most thrilling aspect of this new version of Hamlet is its interpretation of the infamous “play within a play” – the narrative Hamlet uses to reveal to Claudius he knows the truth about his father’s death. In Karia’s reimagining, it becomes a wedding dance rather than a play, and the result is a breathtaking sequence that is incredibly beautiful and haunting at the same time.
Grade: B
Reach out to Josh Sewell at joshsewell81@gmail.com or on BlueSky @joshsewell.bsky.social
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