Movie Review: 'Lucky Logan' is a heist caper at full speed

10 September 2017 - 02:28 By Tim Robey
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Channing Tatum, Riley Keough and Adam Driver in 'Logan Lucky'.
Channing Tatum, Riley Keough and Adam Driver in 'Logan Lucky'.
Image: Bleeker Street

To quote one of the dimmer characters in its attempted speedway robbery, Logan Lucky is a "vagrant fliolation" - namely of the "retirement" from filmmaking Steven Soderbergh announced four years ago.

Logan Lucky is such a cosy return to the big screen - comfort-zone Soderbergh - that it makes his absence feel like a drop in the ocean. The whole game plan goes like clockwork. There's a small fortune to be stolen, a jostling ensemble needed to get together to do it. The hows, the wheres, the whys and the whens are stacked up with perfect dexterity by a show-runner who's been around the block.

Blue-collar West Virginia, land of recession, nail extensions and child beauty pageants, is worlds away from the jazzy, flash-the-cash coastal milieus of Soderbergh's Ocean's franchise. Instead of smarm-personified George Clooney, he has corn-fed Channing Tatum running the racket: decent, dignified, but rough around the edges.

WATCH the trailer for Lucky Logan

Tatum's Jimmy Logan grabs our attention as a hapless hero. He says things like "I looked it up on the google". And he has a bad relationship with his frosty ex-wife (Katie Holmes), who's threatening to leave the state with their daughter and retain sole custody.

Jimmy needs a windfall, badly, and his brother - the even-unluckier Clyde (Adam Driver), who lost his left hand in Iraq - is willing to come on board. Clyde works in a dive bar, pouring drinks with his good hand, and philosophising about the Logan family curse: one which doesn't seem to have afflicted their sister Mellie (Riley Keough), a hairdresser and amateur petrolhead they can rely upon for any high-speed getaways as the plan gathers pace.

The day of the Coca-Cola 600 Nascar race is chosen, when there will be wads of cash in the racetrack's vault. Breaking in, though, will need the services of Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), a not-to-be-messed-with safe-cracker currently doing jail time for his prior misdeeds.

Breaking him out, and then back in, without the authorities having a clue becomes the order of the day.

The film's comedy is loose and generous and Tatum, Driver and Keough are well cast as siblings.

These folk aren't demonised as default Trump voters. Downsized and downtrodden, they won't be patronised - but when the system isn't offering them anything much, their only option is to screw it and help themselves. - The Daily Telegraph

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