Daniel Craig’s never had THIS much fun as James Bond
‘ UNNeCeSSARy sub- plot, gratuitous vanity casting, ’ muttered a haughty voice nearby, condemning one particular bit of nonsense in Steven Soderbergh’s pleasingly silly heist movie.
But given that the whole caper is joyfully unnecessary and studded with daft star turns, i see no point in grumbling.
Frankly, in a week of macho films, this one offers all the tasteless innocent sparkle of the tiara worn by its hero’s tiny, primped child Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie) as she caterwauls through take Me home, Country Roads at a toddler pageant in West Virginia. And who can sniff at any film featuring Daniel Craig, that most lugubrious and tormented 007, camping up his trademark scowl beneath a bleached- blond crewcut as Joe Bang?
he is a safecracker in jail, shambling around in the depths of a baggy-striped prison onesie. But then he has to get naked — or rather ‘nekked’ (top half only, girls) in a car driven by Riley Keough at high speed to a stock car racetrack. he has to change
on the way, so he can join the gang and hastily make a homemade explosive of lavatory bleach, gummy bears and the salt substitute prescribed by the prison nurse for his blood pressure.
Don’t try this at home, children. It really won’t work.
Joe has been recruited by Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), a lame exfootball star sacked from a mine and needing money to see more of little Sadie. He plans a robbery with brother Clyde (Adam Driver), a bartender and Iraq veteran with a false arm, lugubrious basso-profundo tones and a black wig that makes him look like Trevor Nunn gone to seed. These losers and their relatives (Joe has two hillbilly brothers who are constantly debating points of morality) are robbing the NASCAr stock car race, which appears to pipe all of its cash into an underground labyrinth.
To make it more awkward, they need to spring Joe from jail to do the job, but smuggle him back in time for his release.
It’s preposterous and selfindulgent: a bit like a much less disciplined version of ealing comedies such as The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill mob.
Logan Lucky also offers endless opportunities to send up the American South: notably with a yowling ‘Gaad Bless America’ intercut with a scene of rioting inmates negotiating with the captive prison warden for a new library book.
oh, and there’s also Seth macFarlane from Family Guy as max Chilblain, a Cockney race promoter with more curls than the toddler pageant queen.
Gratuitous? You bet.