Why Bob Odenkirk’s action film is set in small-town Minnesota

Rural Minnesota isn’t about to become a red-hot setting for action flicks. But it’s hard to imagine “Normal,” Bob Odenkirk’s latest stab at being a big-screen bruiser, taking place anywhere else.

In the film, premiering this week in theaters, the “Better Call Saul” star plays Ulysses Richardson, the interim sheriff of a fictional Minnesota town where the winter parade is the social event of the year and spotting the local moose earns you bragging rights.

A bank robbery and snowstorm expose the residents’ secret connection to the criminal world, hurtling Richardson into the kind of cartoon violence John McClane of “Die Hard” encounters whenever he’s on vacation.

Derek Kolstad, who wrote the script with Odenkirk, said the Upper Midwest fit the mission: make audiences believe that seemingly friendly folks — including a mayor played by perennial nice guy Henry Winkler — could be stone-cold killers.

“How many times do you click on true-crime stuff and find out the serial killer is from Wisconsin?” said Madison native Kolstad, who created the “John Wick” and “Nobody” franchises. “We’re Midwest Nice, to a point. Then we snap. These are versions of the people I grew up with, the people I saw in church or passed by in small towns. The idea is that they’re respectful but with a gun hidden behind their backs.”

Kolstad swears it’s just a coincidence that the sheriff Richardson replaces shares a surname with Marge Gunderson, Frances McDormand’s character in ”Fargo.” But the 1996 movie wasn’t far from the filmmakers’ minds, even though they were shooting in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“When a movie stakes its claim as powerfully as ‘Fargo’ did, it’s hard not to be connected to it,” Odenkirk said in an April 11 Zoom interview from Miami, where he was getting ready to show the film at a festival. “It’s just filmmaking fun. It doesn’t have any purpose other than to make you go, ‘Holy crap.’”

Odenkirk is no stranger to the Midwest. Before achieving success as a comedy writer (“Saturday Night Live,” “Mr. Show”) and TV actor (“Breaking Bad,” Broadway’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”), he grew up in the Chicago suburbs and attended Southern Illinois University. He spent time in Minneapolis in 2016 researching a potential AMC miniseries on the late David Carr, a major figure on the Twin Cities alt-media scene before attracting national attention as a New York Times media reporter.

Odenkirk thought the project was dead, but there has been recent talks about reviving it.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed that it could come back,” he said. “David didn’t make pals with everybody. So when you want to make a movie about the guy, you’re literally going to the people that he confronted. That makes it hard.”

Odenkirk was developing the Carr project several years before his career took an unexpected turn. The box office success of 2021’s “Nobody,” in which he played an assassin forced out of retirement, and its 2025 sequel, turned him into an unlikely action star.

“Watching the everyman kick ass is fun,” Kolstad said, in explaining Odenkirk’s appeal as a one-man wrecking crew. Their collaboration makes more sense than you might think. “A good action sequence is about the same length as a great comedy sketch. There’s a three-act structure. Ultimately, we look at the two genres as one.”

Odenkirk has enjoyed his stint as a lean, mean fighting machine. But don’t expect “Nobody 3″ anytime soon.

“I always wanted to do right by the action people. They let me into this space and helped me be as good as I can be. But I don’t know when I’ll do another action film,” said Odenkirk, who has amassed 20 Emmy nominations. “I’m not one of those guys who does just that.”

Upcoming gigs include a play with “Mr. Show” partner David Cross, a TV pilot written by his son, Nate Odenkirk and a return to Broadway in an unannounced project. But ultimately, he wants to work less, a goal since his heart attack in 2021.

Tribune News Service