Logan full of offbeat charms
Movie lacks regular police chases, gunfights that are the norm in heist flicks
Director Steven Soderbergh steals critics’ best hope for a snarky reaction to his new movie when he has a character refer to the robbers in as “Ocean’s 7-11.”
Featuring not one but two tunes from John Denver, and nary a firearm in sight, this might be one of the most relaxed bank vault jobs in the history of cinema.
So moviegoers take note: If you go for the adrenalin rush, you might want to bring your own Red Bull.
There is fast driving but there are no police chases, and fisticuffs that mostly take place off-screen. The shopping-for-supplies montage is set in a suburban Lowe’s and the scale model of the criminals’ target is made out of pizzabox cardboard.
Oh, and their explosive device is crafted from such improbably innocuous ingredients that even the film’s stars aren’t buying it, requiring munitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, sporting bleach-blond hair and a somewhere-in-the-Carolinas accent) to chalk up some chemical formula by way of explanation. Joe Bang’s initials match, but James Bond he ain’t.
His co-conspirators are brothers Jimmy and Clyde Logan, played by Channing Tatum and Adam Driver. Clyde (Driver), an Iraq war vet and one-armed bartender, is the more philosophical of the two, though his philosophy tends to focus on “the Logan curse” that he thinks haunts his family, including their sister, Mellie (Riley Keough), and Jimmy’s young daughter, who lives with her mom (Katie Holmes).
Jimmy (Tatum) is the pragmatist: When he gets laid off from a mining outfit that has been hired to shore up the sub-basements of a major NASCAR speedway in North Carolina, he decides to burgle the track’s vault. He announces this plan to his brother in four syllables. Some people have safe words. Jimmy has a danger word. It’s “cauliflower.”
Soderbergh loudly announced his retirement from filmmaking several years ago, but like a movie character drawn back for that one last score, the director of
the trilogy and the under-appreciated 2009 film is back in the big chair.
Working from a script by newcomer Rebecca Blunt (a scribe so reclusive some have suggested the name is a pseudonym for Soderbergh himself), he has crafted an almost anti-heist movie, its stately pacing more in keeping with a drawing-room drama than a NASCAR money grab.
His characters include Jack (son of Dennis) Quaid and Brian (son of Brendan) Gleeson as Joe’s brothers, who have about one wit between them.
Continuing his penchant for peculiar casting choices, he also gives us an almost unrecognizable Seth MacFarlane as a sportsdrink magnate; Dwight Yoakam as the warden of the prison where Joe has been incarcerated; and Hilary Swank as an FBI agent who swings in to solve the crime, shaking down suspects like a dog with a bone and grumbling: “I hate airtight alibis.”
It all adds up to an uneven story that manages to be far more entertaining than a bare-bones description would suggest. Take Jimmy’s bizarre run-in with a public-health nurse played by Katherine (daughter of Sam) Waterston, who gives him a tetanus shot, a Band-Aid and a wistful look that has Jimmy and audience members alike wishing she wouldn’t leave.
Or the inmates’ attempts to cover for Joe’s brief prison breakout, which turns into an impromptu critique of George R.R. Martin’s delay in completing his
books. These scenes contain an internal logic and humour that doesn’t quite match the rest of the movie, but doesn’t really hurt it either. It’s like wine and cheese: Nothing like one another, but an excellent pairing nonetheless.
won’t be to everyone’s liking. But thanks to a weird release coincidence, those with more mainstream aspirations can head to while viewers wanting a more edgy fraternal-robbery story can take in
which opens next week in many markets.
Then again, this one offers pleasures you won’t find anywhere else. And isn’t the best heist one where you go after that one-of-a-kind treasure?