What Odenkirk can sell, as his unlikely turn as a suburban dad with a violent past in the 2021 sleeper hit \u201cNobody\u201d<\/a> and last year\u2019s sequel \u201cNobody 2\u201d made clear, is something more specific and, in its way, a lot more interesting. He can show you what it looks like when your neighbor \u2014 a guy who could be teaching an intro to business class at a night school \u2014 is capable of lethal violence. And he can be likable and funny while doing it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a certain kind of fighting that I can do that fits my face and my body type,\u201d Odenkirk explains. \u201cI can play a guy who is just going to wear the other person down. He\u2019s going to do the simplest moves he can find and they\u2019re going to be hard and they\u2019re going to hurt. That\u2019s what I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n If it wasn\u2019t already clear that Odenkirk isn\u2019t your conventional action star, his new film \u201cNormal\u201d should seal the deal. In theaters Friday after a strong reception at SXSW last month, the genre-scrambling, darkly comic neo-western casts him as Ulysses, a principled small-town sheriff who takes a temporary posting in a sleepy corner of Minnesota called Normal. Haunted by a failed marriage and a past case that ended badly, he arrives hoping for a quiet stint and instead stumbles into a mystery involving his dead predecessor and a town whose friendly residents are suspiciously armed to the teeth and sitting on an enormous amount of wealth. As he starts to pull at the thread, Ulysses finds himself up against not just the entire community but \u2014 improbably, given the setting \u2014 the yakuza.<\/p>\n Bob Odenkirk as Sheriff Ulysses in the movie \u201cNormal\u201d <\/p>\n (Magnolia Pictures)<\/p>\n Indie distributor Magnolia\u2019s biggest theatrical push to date (opening on approximately 2,000 screens), \u201cNormal\u201d has enough over-the-top violence and elaborately choreographed kills to satisfy anyone coming for carnage. But for Odenkirk, it was the prospect of a slow burn that appealed to him, with a first stretch that plays closer to \u201cFargo\u201d before the mayhem ramps up to almost cartoonish proportions.<\/p>\n \u201cThis one had, like, one-and-a-half acts of mystery and a humorous look at small-town people,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the part where I was like, I want to do that. Because, you know, otherwise, you don\u2019t need me \u2014 get Jason Statham.\u201d<\/p>\n Setting the film in the Midwest helped tune it to Odenkirk\u2019s particular temperament. The actor, who was born and raised in Illinois, developed the story with \u201cNobody\u201d screenwriter Derek Kolstad, best known for creating the \u201cJohn Wick\u201d franchise, and the two quickly bonded over a shared sensibility.<\/p>\n \u201cBob immediately leaped into this idea because he grew up in Naperville,\u201d Kolstad says. \u201cI grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and we totally understood the mentality of small towns and how you can have the onion of a deep, dark secret. We love small towns. We\u2019re not making fun of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The character they built for \u201cNormal\u201d was intentionally less mythic and more grounded than the former government assassin Odenkirk plays in \u201cNobody.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe is much more scrappy and internal and less about male rage,\u201d says the film\u2019s English director Ben Wheatley, best known for genre-bending fare like 2015\u2019s \u201cHigh-Rise\u201d and 2016\u2019s \u201cFree Fire,\u201d<\/a> who drew on influences ranging from westerns to Hong Kong action films to the slapstick of the Three Stooges and \u201cEvil Dead II.\u201d \u201cUlysses can fight, but it\u2019s not about him becoming this kind of revengeful wraith moving through the movie dispatching people. It\u2019s action, but with empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe older you get, the more you realize you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on,\u201d Odenkirk says. \u201cI like playing a person who has that level of experience of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n (Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n For Odenkirk, part of the appeal was the opportunity to play someone closer to where he is now, not just physically but emotionally. \u201cI love the chance to play someone who is my age, who maybe was proud and full of himself when he was younger and then made some bad choices and feels a little lost,\u201d he says. \u201cThe older you get, the more you realize you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. I like playing a person who has that level of experience of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776258191_325_.jpeg\")
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