Bob Odenkirk is sitting on the porch of a Downtown Mesa bed-and-breakfast, wearing a Cubs baseball hat. Spring training has long been a way for the actor to reset — a practice he discovered during his “Saturday Night Live” days.
“Hohokam Field is where the Cubs played,” said Odenkirk, who played Saul Goodman in “Better Call Saul.” “‘SNL’ was so hard and New York is the best, but it wears you out.”
While in Mesa, Odenkirk promoted his action film “Normal,” which hits screens on Friday, April 17. Directed by Ben Wheatley and written by Derek Kolstad, “Normal” tells the story of Ulysses, who moves to Normal, Minnesota, to serve as the temporary sheriff. After a bank robbery, Ulysses finds a townwide criminal underground. Odenkirk described “Normal” as unexpectedly special.
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“Every movie is like, you think you know what you’re making… but you don’t really know what you’ll end up with,” he said. “This one definitely ended up better than we could have dreamed.”
He credited Wheatley with shaping the film’s tone of “comical violence.”
“He’s made quite a few feature films — all of them good, none of them in the negative,” he said.
“They all have humor in them. They all have action in them. This was right up his alley. When you put him together with Derek Kolstad, who wrote the screenplay, they are a powerful team. There’s violence, but it’s very comical violence. You have to laugh. It’s like a horror film where you know the bloody murder happens. Everyone in the room jumps up, laughs and screams.”
Wheatley’s signature mix of humor, violence, and oddball tension is all over “Normal,” especially in the film’s chaotic, unscripted centerpiece: a massive shootout between the Yakuza and the townspeople.
“That big shootout in the restaurant at the end, that’s not scripted,” he said. “Ben Wheatley made what you see.”
Odenkirk’s character, Ulysses, marks a shift. In “Better Call Saul,” he played a character several years younger than him at times. “Normal” is more relatable.
“He is my age, and he has my life behind him,” he said.
Ulysses is capable yet cautious, a man who has seen enough to hesitate before stepping into chaos. Early in the film, he senses something off in a sheriff’s obituary but tries to ignore it.
“He’s really trying hard not to almost engage with the world around him,” Odenkirk explained.
When the story forces Ulysses into action, Odenkirk’s innate talents shine — even the small gestures matter. When he unloads a gun and catches the bullet, Odenkirk sees it as a quiet character reveal.
“It just says to me, he’s comfortable around guns.” The trick, he added, is easily learned. “If I gave you a gun to practice with in three days, you could do it.”
Odenkirk long wanted to play action roles. He approaches them as sketches that are structured, rhythmic and built on clever beats.
“They tend to be between 3 and 5 minutes long. They have a beginning, middle and end,” he said. “If you can put some cleverness in there, it feels like I’m making a comedy sketch.”
“Normal” gives him the blend he prefers: emotional, physical and humorous. “I like mixing,” he said. “I just don’t think I would be satisfied with a movie that was just action from beginning to end.”
Outside of “Normal,” Odenkirk is writing a play with longtime collaborator David Cross and helping his son develop a TV pilot inspired in part by the British series “The Royle Family.” He talks about both with the same curiosity that’s defined his career. “I’m always looking for the thing that’s fundamentally different from what I just did,” he said. “That’ll keep it fresh.”
