Pun Salad

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This is one of those "let's see what this is about" movies: it showed up "free-to-me" on HBO Max, and since I liked Bob Odenkirk, and his previous two action movies, and that's him with a big gun on the movie poster… hey, why not?

Executive summary: this one is more violent, more morally ambiguous, and less family-valued than the Nobody movies. The dark-comedy dial is turned up to 11. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Salad would have not liked it.

Odenkirk plays Ulysses Richardson, who is trying to make a career of substitute-policing. His current gig is in wintry Normal, Minnesota, where the town's police chief has passed away under mysterious circumstances: frozen, naked, with a fly rod in one hand and an ice auger in the other. (But as someone eventually points out: you don't use a fly rod for ice fishing.)

But Ulysses is content to ride out his tenure in Normal without making waves about the suspicious death of his predecessor. And everyone in town is friendly enough to him … until a couple of bozos try to hold up the local bank. Gee, could that be related (somehow) to the opening Yakusa scene, where grisly punishments were exacted, and an unenthusiastic underling was sent to Normal? You betcha.

Anyway, Ulysses finds himself the target of (approximately) all 1,890 residents of Normal. Can he figure out an exit strategy? He does, but…