Sleek, old-fashioned filmmaking at its best

Film review: Logan Lucky

MANILA, Philippines — Stephen Soderbergh thinks a lot of football player-turned-actor Channing Tatum. He took the beefcake who can dance and cast him as an aging stripper in Magic Mike. The picture performed very well at the box-office and got everybody to take Tatum seriously as an actor. I assure you that there are more who will after they get a look at Tatum in Logan Lucky. Once again the reason why is Soderbergh. The director gave Tatum the lead role in his latest and it once more proved to be a perfect, charming fit.

Tatum plays Jimmy Logan, a down on his luck Iraq war veteran. Fired again from his coal-mining job because of his “pre-existing” leg injury, he has set his sights on a big score, robbing a racetrack of cash earnings during a NASCAR race.  His plan seems so easy to pull off and he is sure that it will change his life forever. Hopefully, too, it will put an end to what the town believes is the Logan family curse. All he needs is the right crew to get the heist moving towards the big pay-off.

Logan knows just who to tap for his team. There is his brother Clyde, played by Adam Driver, who I am sure you all remember as the bad son and budding Darth Vader of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. In keeping with the family’s unlucky destiny, Clyde lost part of his arm in Iraq and now works as a bartender. He thoroughly believes in the curse but is convinced that maybe, if you push it in the right direction, luck can change. A sister played by Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough is also asked to join.

Then there is Joe Bang who is an expert in blowing up safes.  You see the racetrack earnings are placed in an underground safe. Logan knows how to get to it and how to get it out because he was a miner and once worked under that racetrack. His problem is opening that safe and for this he recruits Joe Bang played by James Bond actor Daniel Craig as a blonde with a strange accent. Bang is all for the plan and even gets his two brothers to sign on.

There are two problems though. One is the red-necked brothers, played by more second-generation actors, Jack Quaid from Dennis Quaid and Brian Gleeson, of Brendan Gleeson, are both in the dim-witted side. And the other one is that Bang is still incarcerated with five months to go in his sentence. No problem, the optimistic Logan believes. He is fine with the brothers. As for Bang, they can just bust him out of jail and then bring him back after he has opened the safe to serve the rest of his time.

By the time the story gets to this part, you start thinking that Logan is also not really all in there in the head. Then the suspicion that Soderbergh has set up another one of his deceptive, deftly executed capers snakily raises its head.  Remember Soderbergh is the same guy who came up with those three Ocean’s Eleven films that starred George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, etc. etc., and he has a unique, fun way with plot twists.

Although it is not shot in posh surroundings but in the America of sweat and dust and dreams that remain just that. Dreams. Logan Lucky is really no different. The men are just as attractive but in a red-necked way. It is also funny at times. Logan’s gang is called the Ocean’s 7-11 and one Logan brother plus the other equals one whole man. But a sense of desperation like an image of a brass ring growing smaller and smaller permeates every scene. Remember, it was also Soderbergh who made Erin Brokovich.

Logan Lucky marks Soderbergh’s comeback to the big screen after a hiatus of four years. It is just like him to choose something so deceptively simple. This is sleek, old-fashioned filmmaking at its best. It reminds me of his debut the clever Sex, Lies and Videotape which he wrote and directed when he was all of 29 years old, that initially seemed like a boring exploitation flick until he sewed up everything for the surprise at the end. He retains his fine form for Logan Lucky. He seems to be just fooling around, keeping the pace at a nice trot and the mood relaxed while dropping jokes with punch lines that set in, a scene or two later. Keep the ears open for the Game of Thrones gag.

With Soderbergh in a cool, reined-in but thoroughly masterful mode with all his puzzles in place, he trains the spotlight on the motley group of characters. And what a cast he has to bring them to life. Keough is very effective as the surprise solid center and Bang and his brothers elicit laughs and sympathy as out-of-sorts outlaws that could have come from an FPJ action flick. But it is with Tatum and Driver where Soderbergh hits the jackpot. They are hilarious as brothers.

Of course, I am sure Tatum can look forward to more films with Soderbergh as well as other directors. This guy is a natural, open performer who can convey a lifetime of pain and diminishing hope just by playing John Denver’s Take Me Home Country Roads.  Like a lot of other people today, all that Jimmy Logan needs is to find his way home.

Isn’t it grand that Steven Soderbergh has?