Channing
Tatum Adam Driver Riley Keogh Seth MacFarlane Katherine Waterston
Daniel Craig Katie Holmes Farrah Mackenzie Hilary Swank Brian Gleeson Jack Quaid Dwight Yoakum
Crime
capers are always fun when they’re cleverly worked out, smack of basic human
truths, and have colorful characters.
Steven Soderburgh’s Logan Lucky
is just such a film, keeping you guessing and chuckling throughout. He is clearly the director,
cinematographer, and editor, but the first-time writer named Rebecca Blunt is a
mystery about whom Soderburgh’s lips are sealed. But it doesn’t really matter, because the film is so
playful, warmly human, and so well executed from the writing to the production,
we don’t really care.
In
Charlotte, North Carolina, the Logan family has the reputation for being
cursed, what with so many things happening to them through the years. Jimmy Logan is having an especially
hard time these days with a football promise coming to nothing, a failed
marriage, loss of his job, a bum leg, and he can’t even pay his phone
bill. His brother Clyde seems to
be doing reasonably well in his bar, even with part of his arm and hand missing
because of a war injury. They have
a sister, Mellie (Keogh), who seems to be able to assist and manage any storm.
Jimmy
is desperate. His ex-wife (Holmes)
is getting ready to move out of town with her husband, taking his cherished
daughter Sadie (Mackenzie) with her.
(Sadie is an amusing insertion into the story with her knowledge of
tools to hand to her car mechanic daddy and her penchant for all things girly
like fashion shows and the “culinary arts.”)
What
follows is Jimmy’s intricate plan to siphon off some of the Charlotte Motor
Speedway’s questionable betting
practices, pulling in his brother Clyde (Driver), his sister Mellie (Keogh),
prisoner Joe Bang (dynamite expert) (Craig) and Bang’s two brothers (Gleeson
and Quaid), and other inmates. To
make matters even more entertaining and clever, some people are used unwittingly
(but never exploited without compensation). That is, no one is really harmed in this caper, making the
crime go down as all part of the fun.
The
main characters are all warmly sympathetic—despite the film’s making fun of
them in a loving way, absent of cruelty.
The actors should be congratulated on their southern accents, even
British Daniel Craig. The plot is
set up to get back at “The Man”, which has a satisfying effect on the viewer
and works to excuse the crime. It
roasts common defenses, such as firing a person for “liability issues”, a
prison warden (Yoakam) swearing that X (fires, riots, escapes) “just does not
happen here”, and a racetrack administrator claiming ignorance about an
insurance claim. I got a kick out
of the last scenes showing pairs of characters getting together sometime later
after the mysterious disappearance of a considerable amount of money.
Channing
Tatum is a star in evincing a character who is simple on the outside but
enormously complex and intelligent on the inside. Adam Driver is well versed in playing so many different
types, and he comes across believably here as a younger brother looking up to
his older sibling and really wanting to please everyone. The actor Daniel Craig is almost
unrecognizable as the bleached-blonde, hair-cropped felon he is. I appreciated seeing the character of
Sadie (Mackenzie) presented as a many-sided girl with diversified interests
exploring the world.
I’m
glad Soderburgh is back after a “retirement” from movie making. He has a way of producing engaging
films that have a social message, without detracting from their entertainment
value.
Hee-haw heroes put one over on the
powers that be: a crime caper
that’s an entertaining romp.
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