‘Logan’ viewers aren’t in luck
Soderbergh returns, but falls far short of his ‘Ocean’s’-era appeal
When Steven Soderbergh announced his retirement from feature films with the release of “Side Effects,” it became an instant cliche to say that he picked a good way to go out. Now, four years later, Soderbergh is back with “Logan Lucky,” but it’s not a happy return. It’s his weakest film in years and his least characteristic.
Soderbergh’s films are generally lean and propulsive. When he does a genre, he commits to it. He finds unexpected elements to emphasize, but he stays true to the form. If he occasionally strays into zaniness, these departures add color and are usually welcome, because they don’t distort the drive and
shape of the story. But in “Logan Lucky,” restraint and control are out the window.
Instead, we get a movie that is light and pointless and goes on for two long hours. It’s as wacky as a Coen brothers film, but without any the Coens’ undertone of darkness or strangeness. Mostly it’s just cute. Here and there, “Logan Lucky” has pleasing moments, but they arise and disappear, and the story remains — and this is especially surprising in a Soderbergh film — a matter of complete indifference.
It begins well; that is, the first scene is pleasing. A man is fixing some machinery and talking to his little daughter, who is about 8 and looks like a Margaret Keane painting. And as they talk, he calls out for various tools, and the daughter hands them to him, sometimes asking for refinements — does he want regular pliers or a needlenose? It’s a sweet opening that takes you into the father-daughter relationship.
The man is Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), from a West Virginia family known for hard luck. When his hard luck extends to losing his most recent job, he gets an idea to plan a huge robbery — at a NASCAR race, of all things. To this end, he enlists his one-armed brother, Clyde (Adam Driver), but they soon realize they need the special talents of master criminal Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), who happens to be incarcerated.
What emerges is very much like one of Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” movies, about an elaborate heist involving many moving parts and against almost impossible odds. But imagine an “Ocean’s” movie without anything there to give it charm, energy or even the barest rooting interest. That’s the essential problem of “Logan Lucky.”
There’s no villain, no specific enemy that they’re stealing from. The motive is just a general desire for money, as opposed to an urgent need. The characters aren’t just bland. They’re condescending caricatures, a bluestate vision of red-state people, so that the accents are exaggerated to the point of absurdity. This absurdity makes for the occasional amusing moment, but such moments are at the expense of taking anyone seriously.
This means that for all the wild stabs in the direction of comedy, “Logan Lucky” is almost without a human element, save for a stray moment here and there between Jimmy and his adorable daughter (Farrah Mackenzie). The experience, instead, is that of watching a giant mechanism, but one without any human reason to be watched. We might as well be watching gears turn in a machine. The experience is trance-inducing.
That’s the bad news. The not-quite-good news is that individual scenes do lurch to life, here and there — not in a consistent way, not in a way that builds into something more, but in various ways that relieve the tedium for a few seconds. “Logan Lucky” is not a contemptible piece of work. It’s a genuine effort by talented people that never quite comes off.