Speaker 1: All right. So normally I have a very fancy introduction
that I do that talks about what the movie is
in some kind of cool or mysterious way. But this
week I just needed to get the intro done and
I did not have time to write it. And as
you can tell, it's already late. You're getting this on Tuesday.
You should have gotten yesterday, you know. Just keep me
in your thoughts in prayers. Please keep me in your
thoughts in prayers. This week's movie is Normal. I'm Ronald
Young Junior, and I'm leaving the theater. Alright, This is
Ronald and I am leaving the theater after seeing Normal.
Normal written by Derek Colstad, directed by Ben Wheatley, starring
Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Heady, Rina Jolly and as usual.
For complete listing of the cast and crew, you can
go to the link in our show notes It is
just Me today. Normal is a film that is billed
as from the creators of John Wick. Who is the
writer Derek Colstad, who all so did Nobody one and two.
He wrote the first three John Wicks. And of course
the connection here is Bob Odenkirk, who was in Nobody
one and two is now in this one Normal, which
I think is a little bit of brand confusion, and
that is an in name and it is Bob Odenkirk
and yet another action movie. And the premise is that
Bob Odenkirk is a sheriff in the town of Normal,
small town in USA. I don't remember what state it
was in, but he's in Normal. And in Normal, everybody
is doing their thing. It's a small town. They found
out a way to manage themselves in this small town,
and in this small town for some reason, they are
all flush with cash. Everybody's making it work. One of
the bits of narration we get from Odinkirk early in
the movie is that despite what the rest of the
country is going through, Normal is seemingly able to thrive.
The movie opens with some bits about the Yakuza, and
there is a Yakuza connection to Normal. And what we
find out later is that this Yakuza connection and this
outsider sheriff Bob Odenkirk, who is interim sheriff in Normal
at the time for eight weeks while they pick a replacement,
he is now He is now in opposition to what
Normal wants, which is to take the percentage of their
goods from the yakuza and continue having their small town
life no matter what the cost, and the cost tends
to be at human lives of people caught in the crossfire,
including this interim sheriff. You have Bob Odenkirk, who comes
from a dark past, who is essentially running. That's why
he's taking this temporary sheriff job first and normal, and
it's indicated that he had done it in another place,
and so he has been doing it from place to
place because he's trying to outrun the air quote sins
of his past. And I think a lot of what's
going on here is that the reason why they selected
him is because he's a guy who's like, my name's Bennett,
I'm not in it. He doesn't want to be a
part of anything else that's going on. Bob Odenkirk was
the right selection for that part of the role. I
would say, there again brand confusion because he is playing
a lot of action roles recently, so turning this on
it's called normal. He's everyman and also he is to
be a one man army. If you watch the trailers,
that's essentially what he ends up being and that's basically
the bulk of the movie. It's not a long movie.
It's ninety minutes, and overall, I think it's pretty good.
I think I liked it for the most part. I
do have a few quibbles. I think in a lot
of ways, this movie is Hot Fuzz meets Assault on
Precinct thirteen meets Thirty Days of no in that there's
a snowstorm and there is gun warfare going from one
part of this town to another. It's basically him against
other police officers, which gives AsSalt on Precinct thirteen, and
the whole town is in on it, which gives Hot Fuzz.
So all in a blender. I really like Bob Odenkirk.
I liked his scenes with Lena Heaty, who is criminally
underused in this film. She's great with Odenkirk. There's real chemistry.
They use her to get more backstory out of him.
That's really good. And I realized the reason why you
get Odenkirk is because he does such a good job
with this dark past monologue. He's very good at playing
a good guy who maybe has some demons or something
going on in the back of his mind. The bad
is that there was a lot of ways in which
the score, which was very serious, was working against the
more comedic bits. There's an instance in which a person
gets an ear shot off. I know this is meant
to be funny. There's interactions between the sheriffs and the
townspeople that's meant to be funny, but they have this
very serious score happening in the background, which I think
undercuts the parts of it that are supposed to be
laugh out loud funny that we're supposed to be having
a good time at even some of the dialogue. Because
of what's going on, it doesn't come off as funny
as it could. You either need there's something about the
humor that is in something like John Wick that is
delivered in silence, or it's delivered with a look that
Keanu Reeves gives, but it is typically not undercut by
a score, or it's working along with the score, meaning
that if it's sped up. If you're falling downstairs, then
the score is working with you falling down the stairs.
If you're throwing knife, if you're throwing knives, a knife
after knife after knife after knife, the score is working
with you. If you keep getting thrown through glass. The
score again is working with you this one. It does
not seem like the score is working along with the
action that I'm actually seeing on the screen. It's a
little messy and it's strangely paced, meaning that again, for
a ninety minute movie, I feel like like you have
a chance to make some things seem make some things,
make it seem like some things are a miss, and
then you speed it up, and then maybe you slow
it down just a little bit, and then you speed
it up all the way to the end. You only
got ninety minutes. This isn't rocket science in this case,
You're not. You shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, and
it feels like they're reinventing the wheel in a lot
of ways. It feels like they well, not reinventing the wheels,
but it seems like they kind of forgot the basics
of making a film like this, which is just I mean,
you put the heat on, you let it keep going,
and you're hustled to the end. That's what it is.
I just said it. I know I'm repeating myself, but
that's not what they do here. It slows down a bit.
There's more backstory given, and I think the first thirty
minutes are way slower than they should be. I almost
feel like if this was if this had been one
hour of a television show in terms of setup, where
should we be at the end of forty four minutes.
By the end of forty four minutes, I mean, you
have eight other episodes, so it's going to be a
lot slower when you only have ninety minutes. By the
end of twenty minutes, we should be deep into having
our senses perked. What's going on? Is this mystery unfolding?
And if you're going to be slow in the first
thirty minutes when there's only an hour left, especially as
the actions beginning to build and I mean stuff's about
to go down, then I feel like there you really
have to consider what what is this for? What story
have we told here? And in the first thirty minutes,
I remember looking at my watching me like, man, we
better hasten a We don't have much longer to go,
and we've only just now gotten to who is this person?
Who is the former sheriff's child? So yeah, I think overall,
a you know, pretty good film, and it goes off
the rails a bit towards the end, not because of
the acting. All of the actors I feel like clocked
in and did their job. They did what was in
the script. I think editing and sequencing was a bit
of an issue. This was a film I saw after
seeing Protector, and there was a few issues where I
was like, Okay, some of this is a little bit
amateurish in terms of how they're sequencing this together, what
this scene looks like, the decisions of just the efficiency
of filming an action sequence. There was one in particular
in which a sign and kills a person. We know
it's gonna happen, we see it coming, and they milk
it in a way that I thought, Hey, as soon
as we see that sign wobble, and as soon as
we see that this guy needs to be taken out, that,
as far as I'm concerned, this this should already be happening,
Like the next thing I should see is a sign
hitting this person as a matter of fact, or it
should wobble and I should forget that the sign wobbled,
and then later it goes and hits that guy. But
it wobbled, and we see it wobble again, and we
know it's gonna hit this guy and then it does,
and I remember thinking, huh, I wonder, I wonder how
that worked in editing or what was the discussion they
had when they made that scene. That being said, this
movie is is It's April, and this is pre blockbuster season,
so it's getting a little warm. Maybe you want to
be outside, maybe you want to go out of your
house and do an activity. This is a good movie
for that. This is a good uh. This is a
good little date night movie. If you're picking an action movie,
this is a good date night movie to get you
warmed up for the heavy hitters that are about to
come in the next couple of weeks, whether at the
end of April into May as we enter a blockbuster season.
With all that being said, it's a three star movie,
silid three star. At one point I thought it could
have been a four star movie in the first act.
Then it dropped down to three point twenty five, and
then it dropped down to three, and I knew it
couldn't get any lower than a three because I did
enjoy it. It was fine. If it was on I'd
watch it, I'd watch the rest of it. I think
I would watch this movie two or three times. I
would not watch it more than three times. After the
third time, I'd be like, let's watch Assault on Precne
thirteen or Hot Fuzz or Thirty Days of Night. But
this one maybe I've had enough. Maybe the fact and
it's not necessarily that it is eminently derivative of those,
but enough so that I would rather watch a better
version of that than watch this, or go back and
watch Nobody, which actually don't even remember the plot. I
just know that Bob Odenkirk is a family man that
can also kill. So with that, Leaving the Theater is
a production of Oh It's Big Ron Studios. I mixed
this episode and by the time you're hearing this, there
have been many many episodes of Leaving the Theater in
between the end of this three day four movie marathon. Again.
Wednesday it was Project Hill Mary, Thursday it was Hoppers,
and then Protector. It is now Friday, and I just
saw Normal. I've seen countless movies between then and now,
according to your ears, according to what you've heard in
the feed. But this was enough work to get me
a little bit ahead, meaning that I've had some time
to rest in between editing this show and working on Heartbreaker.
Working on this is leaving the theater, working on Wait
for It, and any of the side projects that I
do to make money and keep doing other work. I
say all that to say that this is a bit
of work. It's a bit of labor. I'm a little
bit tired. I still have other things to do. Tonight
I'm going to my friend Marcus's comedy show, and tomorrow
I'm going to see more movies, this time just for fun.
I'm not recording anything. I'm just gonna watch them and
say to myself, huh uh huh, huh uh huh, rather
than record anything about them. I'm not gonna make content
with those, just gonna enjoy them. So that's four days
of movie watching. My life is a lot of work.
Doing this job is a lot of work. And if
you enjoy these reviews and you get this far and
you hear this pitch and you still have not joined
the Patreon, I would encourage you to do so. Joining
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I will not list them all right now. You could
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you help shows like this to exist. You are supporting
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It's big Ron, or go to the link in our
show notes. Show art from Heather Wilder. Theme music by
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. For more information about normal, check
out our show notes. You call me on Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok,
threads or letterboxed at Owitz Big Rond that's at O
h I T S b I g R O N.
You can find out more about this show on other
Owis Big Round Studio shows by following us on Instagram
at Owits Big Rond Studios. Leaving the theater will be
back soon. Thanks for listening. I'm Ronald Young Junior and
I'm throwing knives a knife after knife after knife after
knife