‘Logan’ still able to put a smile on your face
“Logan Lucky” is an easy movie to like, but maybe not love.
In his return to film after a four-year hiatus, director Steven Soderbergh has created a sort of cinematic bingo game from his bag of tricks. Heist movie? Check. Channing Tatum? Check. Not so subtle metaphors slipped into a genre story about a working-class man? Check. Dopey but reliable sidekick brothers? Check.
That’s not to say “Logan Lucky” has nothing new to offer — it just feels familiar in a way that could irk some while making others feel right at home.
This heist film starts in West Virginia, where Tatum’s Jimmy Logan has just been laid off from his job as a coal miner because one of the higher-ups spotted him walking with a limp. Like a distant cousin to Soderbergh’s title character in “Magic Mike” (who, also played by Tatum, supplemented waning construction work with stripping), Jimmy Logan is one more example of a bluecollar guy whose American dream has been dashed.
Once a high school football star with a promising future, Jimmy’s now slightly worse off than where he began. He has a young daughter, Sadie (the precocious, adorable Farrah Mackenzie), and his ex-wife (Katie Holmes) has traded up for a middle- class husband (David Denman).
Jimmy’s brother, Clyde Logan (Adam Driver), is a slow-talkin’ bartender who lost one arm while serving in Iraq, but can still make a killer martini when an arrogant NASCAR sponsor (Seth MacFarlane) challenges him. Jimmy’s sister, Mellie Logan (Riley Keough), is a no-nonsense hairdresser who wears acrylics, drives a stick shift and has no time for her ex-sisterin-law’s new husband.
Since the Logans aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, they decide to try to take something back
from the institutions that have declined to share the wealth with those who support them. Their plan? To intercept the cash flow at a big NASCAR race.
They enlist some help — incarcerated demolition savant Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, who’s hilarious), and his knucklehead brothers, Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson), who proclaim they “know all the things there is to know about computers” while playing horseshoes with toilet seats.
Suffice it to say, this is not a vérité look at the world of coal miners and NASCAR lovers. Nor is it an all- out comedy like “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”
“Logan Lucky” throws in bits about charity health workers providing shots for the impoverished West Virginians. “Magic Mike,” for all its wildness, happened to be about something more than male strippers. “Logan Lucky,” despite some social conscience, comes off as more trivial. And unlike “Magic Mike,” it never really feels like it’s about the people it’s about. We’re always aware we’re watching movie stars just playing at being hillbillies.
That’s not a deal-breaker — since we’ve got a batch of charismatic personalities hamming it up in trucker hats without condescending. But the gimmick goes on a bit too long, with too many tangents that can’t sustain the pulsating energy of, say, the “Ocean’s” movies.
Still, it’s a darn good heist flick that will put a smile on your face.