Logan Lucky ***½ (2017, Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Seth MacFarlane, Dwight Yoakam, Hilary Swank, Katie Holmes, Riley Keough) – Movie Review

After his announced retirement, Steven Soderbergh is tempted back to return to the director’s chair for screen-writer Rebecca Blunt’s Ocean’s Eleven-style crime action comedy. This fun movie races ahead to a win – just! – finishing with a fairly high score.

Channing Tatum and Adam Driver play unlikely brothers Jimmy and Clyde Logan who try to pull off an elaborate banknote heist of the bet takings during a NASCAR race in North Carolina. They might as well have called it Ocean’s Fourteen and got Tatum and Driver to play the younger brothers of George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s characters, the fit is that neat.

Jimmy and Clyde have help from a crazy convict called Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) they spring from jail just for the time of the heist, getting one-armed Clyde locked up too to join him. That means they have to spring the duo, do the heist and get the duo back in jail so no one can suspect them.

They also have help from a couple of crazy half-wits, Bobo (Mark McCullough) and Earl (Charles Halford). They have hindrance from British driver Max Chilblain (Seth MacFarlane), the prison Warden Burns (Dwight Yoakam) and a couple of dogged FBI special agents (Hilary Swank, Macon Blair).

It is all quite slack and laid-back but funny, likeable and appealing, with most of the elements of a really good heist caper carefully assembled, though there are some rough edges and its two hour running time is a little generous. But, above all, it is fun and funny, with a little bit of tension and excitement in the bizarre, bonkers heist plot, but, as it is all so patently unreal, not too much.

Tatum and Driver are excellent, both of them amusing and charming in their quirky ways, and they work well together. Craig just about gets away with his defiantly peculiar casting and offbeat character – after the initial shock, and period of adjustment to the rhythm of it, Craig’s convict Joe Bang does grow on you. Yoakam is amusing, but MacFarlane is a pain, though, quite tiresome.

Why is Connecticut-born MacFarlane playing English and Cheshire-born Craig playing American? Because they can, of course, but it is still very uneasy. It recalls Don Cheadle’s awful London character Basher Tarr in Ocean’s Eleven.

An older-looking Katie Holmes plays Jimmy’s ex, Bobbie Jo Chapman, now living with new hubby Moody Chapman (David Denman), but still seeing her because of his closeness to their little daughter. Riley Keough (grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley) is charming as Jimmy’s new love interest Mellie Logan.

Disposable and ultimately unmemorable Logan Lucky may be, like its title, but it nevertheless plays very well and gives a really good time. The film, its characters nand its actors are most cheerful company, a happy distraction from the real America and the real world. And that is one of the movies’ main jobs, isn’t it?

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Tatum and Soderbergh.