Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Apparently, Steven Soderbergh really was sincere when he announced a few years back that he was giving up filmmaking to pursue a career as a painter. He even went so far as to apprentice himself with acclaimed artist Walton Ford in order to better prepare for his new craft.
But then, well, someone handed him the script for The Knick. And somewhere in the process of making every episode of that show, American cinema’s most nebulous shapeshifter realized that being a director is what he was meant to do. Sorry, Walton.
For his first foray back in the land of feature films after his aborted retirement, Soderbergh returned to the heist formula he had utilized to such great results in Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13 (well…two out of three). But this time, instead of a murderer’s row of movie stars hanging out in ultra-swanky casinos while dressed to the nines and exchanging pithy banter, Logan Lucky focuses on down-and-out blue collar folks in West Virginia who see robbery not as an afternoon leisure activity but as a last desperate chance to free themselves from the deep holes that debt and bad luck have left them in.
Masterminding this endeavor is Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) a once-promising football star who was sidelined following an injury. Determined to raise enough money to stay in his daughter’s life, Jimmy recruits his Iraq War veteran brother (Adam Driver), gear-head sister (Riley Keough), and imprisoned demolitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig). Together, they plot to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the biggest NASCAR race of the year.
But is Logan Lucky as light on its feet as the beloved Ocean’s series (now enjoying its fourth entry in Ocean’s 8, produced by Soderbergh with new director and cast), or is this one criminal crew likely to go bust before they even get close to payday? Find out below!
Next Week’s Pick:
The racially charged 1992 LA Riots are one of the most formative events in our country’s recent social and political memory. Speaking personally, I was too young at the time to really understand what was transpiring. The documentary LA 92 analyzes the tumultuous events surrounding Rodney King and his trial — and the verdict that devastated a city and disquieted a nation. LA 92 is available streaming on Netflix.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review on any MCU film to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
Kaoru Negisa:
Logan Lucky works as a companion piece to Soderbergh’s much more famous Ocean’s films rather than as something to compare it to. The slick, cool detachment of Danny’s crew is replaced by a messier, but ultimately more emotionally satisfying cast of characters. It’s this very inelegance that makes us connect with the characters to the point that it’s difficult to notice that there are no real stakes to the film at all.
Think about it: what does Jimmy want? To not lose his daughter when she moves out of state. However, nothing that Jimmy can do will change this. It isn’t a case like Gus in The Full Monty who needs money to pay off child support. And in the end [SPOILER], he just moves to be close to his daughter’s new home.
However, the lack of stakes doesn’t matter, nor the payoff-less setups, because our stakes in the film is that we like Jimmy, Clyde, Joe Bang, etc. enough that their merely wanting something makes us want them to have it. That’s a cinematic magic trick that far too many people slept on and should blow our minds. This movie’s all heart, so we ignore the lack of connective tissue. (@moonpanther22)
Logan Lucky is Ocean’s Eleven by way of Raising Arizona, and if that isn’t enough to sell you on it then I just don’t know what else to say. As with that other Soderbergh-directed heist film, its greatest strength is its ensemble (led by Channing Tatum and Adam Driver). What sets Logan Lucky apart from Ocean’s is that it goes out of its way to show the real struggles, personal and economic, of its characters. Far from being slick and cool, these thieves scrape by on limited resources and improvisation. Because of that, my empathy with the characters is stronger and the stakes far higher. And yet there is a layer of manic chaos layered on top of that emotional core, especially once Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) and his two brothers show up. It is alternately funny, exciting, and touching, and having spent most of my life in the South it often felt surprisingly authentic. My only complaint is the ending, which without spoiling anything, leaves more loose threads than I would have liked. But other than that, Logan Lucky is Soderbergh firing on all cylinders. (@T_Lawson)
The Team
Heist movies are fine, I guess. With the 305th Ocean’s film out in theaters, I guess there are quite a few folks who like these films much more than I. However, Logan Lucky is the shit.
It’s well written, wonderfully quirky, and perfectly acted. I watched it for the first time a few months back, knowing nothing about it. I was quite pleasantly surprised. Honestly, it’s the first heist movie since The Italian Job that I can say I truly love. (@thepaintedman)
I actually differ from many of my Film Twitter brethren in that I’m largely ambivalent about Steven Soderbergh. He’s got enough no-arguing classics (Out of Sight, Ocean’s 11, The Limey) to be counted as one of the major voices in American cinema, but I often find the scripts he shoots to be half-baked at best, approached more as exercises in style and mechanics than engrossing narratives.
But when Soderbergh gets his hands on a truly choice bit of story, the results are often magic. Rebecca Blunt’s script for Logan Lucky is a thing of beauty, managing the neat trick of being an expertly-crafted machine of set-up/payoff and misdirection, while also maintaining a shaggy, hangout vibe. Like the Ocean’s movies, the true joy of Logan Lucky is one-part playing along with the convoluted plotting and tricky staging of the heist, and one-part just kicking back and enjoying the interactions between various characters.
With the exception of a baffling, needlessly prominent supporting role for Seth MacFarlane, just about everyone here is at the top of their game. I’d like to give a special shout-out to Sebastian Stan for his brief turn as a truly idiosyncratic NASCAR driver. Like Chris Pine, Stan is someone that Hollywood desperately wants to frame as an interchangeable hunk, but is clearly more comfortable letting his freak flag fly. Stan’s role is little more than a goofy bit of color, but it’s probably the thing that makes me laugh the hardest each time I watch the film.(@theTrueBrendanF)
To me, Soderbergh is a lot like Ron Howard in terms of consistency — he’s got a lot of really incredible masterworks, and a lot of stuff that’s either really bad or just unappealing. But I think he does his best work when he’s simply trying to be fun.
Like the Ocean’s series, Logan Lucky is Soderbergh cranking up the fun and making an inventive, hilarious, and imminently watchable whirlwind of planning and execution. That may be where the similarities end, as the bumpkins who populate this redneck rampage are far removed from the Clooney/Pitt mold of suave, ultrahip Vegas fancypants.
The three leads are played by Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Daniel Craig — three actors that I’m not particularly fond of — but that’s all the greater testament that I fell in love with their characters. They do very funny and endearing work here with their exaggerated drawls and odd mix of thievery, good ol’ boy antics, and sincere family values. (@VforVashaw)
Next week’s pick: