Logan Lucky (12A)
Making a welcome return to directing feature films after a mercifully short-lived hiatus, Steven Soderbergh doubles down on the breezy brilliance that made Magic
Mike, Ocean’s Eleven and Out of Sight such bright spots on the blockbuster landscape with a film that brings summer to a close in effortless style. Re-teaming with Channing Tatum for the fourth time, Logan Lucky sees Soderbergh exercise his comedy chops once again with a hillbilly heist film that affectionately satirises and celebrates an American heartland too easily demonised for its broad support of the current president. Not that politics are much on the mind of Jimmy Logan (Tatum). Though hurting financially thanks to a failing economy, he’s got a fool-proof plan to break what’s become something of a family curse by pulling off a daring heist in the middle of a NASCAR race. Teaming up with his onearmed brother Clyde (Adam Driver) and their no-nonsense hairdresser sister Mellie (Riley Keough), Jimmy’s plan isn’t slick or hi-tech, but it is ingenious, requiring them – among other things – to break an explosives expert called Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) out of and then back into jail in order to pull it off. As with the Ocean’s movies it’s the camaraderie rather than the crime that’s the selling point and Soderbergh’s cast are a blast, particularly Craig (who’s funny in way he’s never really been allowed to demonstrate before) and Driver, who gets the film’s biggest laugh as the hapless, handless Clyde.