Rating: 4/5 stars
Steven Soderbergh is a master of the heist film as he returns from his short-lived retirement with the wonderfully fun redneck riff on the genre that is “Logan Lucky.” Channing Tatum (“Comrade Detective”) plays Jimmy Logan, an all-star high school football player who fell short of the pros due to a leg injury.
When the same leg injury gets him laid off of his blue collar, hard hat construction job, Logan decides to put together a rag-tag gang of West Virginian rednecks in an attempt to rob a Coca-Cola sponsored NASCAR race.
Its setting and setup are inherently political, but the film handles this with great tact as no character in the film ever gets expressly political and each character is well-rounded and sympathetic which helps make the film not seem at all mean spirited towards its redneck middle-America characters.
The whole cast turns in great performances, Tatum surprises with his well realized accent and emotionally engaging subplot involving his daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie, “You Get Me.”) Adam Driver (“Girls”) gives another wonderful performance as Jimmy’s younger brother Clyde, a disabled Iraq War veteran turned bartender.
He and Tatum have an instant chemistry and Clyde’s dry humor and sharp wit would be the most enjoyable part of the film, but it is easily Daniel Craig (“Spectre”) as demolitions expert Joe Boom that steals the show. Craig sports bleach blond hair, prison tats and a hilariously cartoonish southern drawl.
Joe Boom is the key to the whole heist but before the Logans can use his chemistry expertise to successfully pull off their big job, they must first break him out of, and eventually back into, the prison in which Mr. Boom resides. The prison subplot is the funniest part of the film and the plan to break out of and back into the prison is as interesting, and nearly as complicated as, the main heist itself.
“Logan Lucky” hits all the expected beats of a heist film in all the ways one familiar with the genre would expect. The only absence is the lack of an ‘explanation of the entire heist scene and the film is better without one, adding suspense and heightening the sense of comedic haphazardness that engulfs the tone of the film.
Like any heist film worth its salt, “Logan Lucky” packs in a few late twists that satisfy, but cause the movie to somewhat stumble towards the finish line. Another late addition that slightly mars the otherwise terrific film is Hilary Swank’s (“Spark: A Space Tail”) uptight FBI agent character.
She comes into the story too late to have any sort of meaningful arc, and her by the books attitude lacks any fun characterization, which slows the film down when it should be speeding up for the final stretch of the race. Soderbergh comes back out of retirement for one last victory lap with “Logan Lucky.”
The movie’s fun, outlawing loving, “Smokey and the Bandit” attitude mesh perfectly with the more earnest and emotional parts of the film. It’s the type of film that is not made anymore in Hollywood, about the type of people often ignored or ridiculed by the movie industry.
It is the last big movie of the summer, and with more heart and more to say than Edgar Wright’s similar heist comedy “Baby Driver”, it just might be the best movie of this summer as well.
Photo: Bleecker Street via YouTube.com
