Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director of Traffic (2000) and films as diverse as Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Kafka (1991), his two-part biopic Che (2008) and The Girlfriend Experience (2009), returns to features after a four year absence with a cool breeze of summertime sweetness called Logan Lucky. On the surface, this lets-rob-a-racetrack caper looks like a redneck spin on Oceans 11, his starry (Clooney, Pitt, Damon) 2001 box-office hit. And in some ways it is. Ive lost interest in anything that smells important, the 54-year-old director recently told the New York Times.
Our advice? See Logan Lucky before you dismiss this restless talent as another convert to down-market pandering. Soderbergh is too inventive and intuitive a filmmaker to be content with a lazy heist film. Set in Trump country, a blue-collar South of lost jobs and broken dreams, its a terrific, twisty, funny-as-hell crime flick about so-called hicks who decide that making America great again starts right at home.
Channing Tatum, Soderberghs own Magic Mike, is a rogue charmer as Jimmy Logan, a West Virginia country boy whos just lost a construction gig due to a football injury that left him with a limp. His personal life is similarly hobbled by Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes), the ex-wife who won custody of their daughter. Jimmy drowns his sorrows at a roadside bar run by his brother Clyde (Adam Driver, a deadpan delight), a war vet whose souvenir from Iraq is a prosthetic lower left arm. The siblings hatch a plan to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina on Memorial Day weekend; having worked the tracks underground, Jimmy knows thats where the money is funneled. And, hey, as a getaway driver they can use their speed-demon sis Mellie (Elvis grandkid Riley Keough)!
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For professional help, the Logans turn to an explosives expert aptly named Joe Bang played by an off-the-chain hilarious Daniel Craig, complete with a holy-shit! blond buzzcut and hillbilly twang. (His screen credit reads: And Introducing Daniel Craig. Good one.) Youll be pleased to learn that Bang delivers what his name promises of course, he has to be sprung from jail first and then snuck back in before the guards catch wise. Soderbergh plots and paces the underground robbery fast cars roaring overhead with the skill of, and we mean this as a compliment, a born thief. Cheers, too, for first-time screenwriter Rebecca Blunt for keeping the surprises coming (lets assume shes real); ditto Seth MacFarlane and Hilary Swank in supporting roles too good to spoil.
Havent we seen this all before? Maybe. But Soderbergh takes his time with each of these two-bit crooks, so we get to know them as people instead of white-trash stereotypes. Its not dawdling its an attention to character that makes all the difference. The late, great Robert Altman was known for such putative toss-offs (think California Split or The Long Goodbye) that play like a party yet still linger in the memory. Logan Lucky belongs in that pleasurable company. Its true that any hack can string together the elements of a heist film suspense, humor, convoluted plot, trick ending. Soderbergh, however, knows how to make those babies dance.
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