Tags: blog, film, action, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday October 06th, 2026
Bang average
"Behind every great man is a great woman", and behind director Ben Wheatley is usually his wife and screen writer Amy Jump. Together, they made terrific films like A Field in England, Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise. Without her, he's made Meg 2: The Trench and Normal.
The real shame is that with a bit more time, care and talent spent on the script, this could have been a decent enough low budget action flick. Just before the halfway point it looks like it's building towards a coherent riff off Hot Fuzz, a dull but efficient cop squaring up against an entire town of busy-body locals with access to a military grade arsenal.
But it all sloppily unravels, threads drift off, ideas go to waste and nothing amounts to anything. The talents of Henry Winkler are thrown away for a single joke. Lena Headey's are poured away on far less than that. It's not bad, just mediocre.
If the OTT action promised by the trailer looks interesting then check out Nobody, which is a mess but escalates it's violence to much better comic effect. Avoid the appalling sequel.
And if you're hankering for a tight, lean, low-budget/high concept nineties style action-thriller then Black and Blue]is just *chef's kiss*.
The worst thing I can say about this film is that Wheatley and Jump have already satirised this kind of bullets-flying action film in the excellent Free Fire. So you end up spending most of Normal just wishing you were watching that film.
At one point, two characters end up in a shoot out, both finding cover behind the same car. It's almost literally this scene from Police Squad.
