Intro
Logan Lucky (2017)
In 2013, Steven Soderbergh announced that he was retiring from directing with his last feature being the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra. Pretty much nobody believed it was actually going to be his last film. For one thing, he was just 50-years-old. And lo and behold, four years later, his retirement was over.
It ended with Logan Lucky, and the story for how it got made and why this particular movie is what got him out of his retirement, well it's a good story. Apparently a script was sent to him with the intention of him giving it to somebody else to make, only he felt compelled to direct it himself. It was widely believed and I think it's since been confirmed that the writer who sent that script, who was a newcomer to film, was actually his wife, Rebbeca Blunt under the alias Jules Asner.
She kept her name as a pseudonym, because she didn't want the story to be that he was directing his wife's script, but since Soderbergh already uses pseudonyms to act as his own cinematographer (Peter Andrews) and editor (Mary Ann Bernard), well most people speculated that it was either him or his wife anyway.
Back to Logan Lucky, the reason why people basically knew it was his wife was that it was set in West Virginia, where she is from, and it features a lot of little touches that make you know it wasn't an outsider who wrote it. Like I'm pretty sure someone deeply familiar with the culture around NASCAR at Charlotte Motor Speedway could have written this movie.
What is Logan Lucky? It's a heist film. If you enjoyed Ocean's Eleven, or any of the Ocean's movies, you will 100 percent like this movie. The movie itself notes that it's Ocean's 7/11, because the principal robbers are not slick and cool, but poor, struggling for cash, and you're never sure how smart they are.
In that sense, they're easier to root for than the Ocean's guys, who while fun to watch, are clearly pricks in a real life context. Whereas these guys are more relatable, have more relatable motives, and have a greater relationship center than the Ocean's movies (father-daughter, whose importance is illustrated by being them sharing the first scene of the movie)
Is it better than Ocean's Eleven? Well, that's harder to say. It's honestly a little harder to follow. Heist movies by design require you to sit back, trust the movie will parcel out information when it wants you to know, and you just got to hope that it makes sense in the end. I do think the movie overplays the "holding back information" part though. The Ocean's movies mostly told you everything with one last trick that allowed them to get away with.
Logan Lucky doesn't really tell you any of the plan until it happens, which probably makes for good repeat viewings to be honest and I actually watched it for the second time, although the second time, I still felt like I was playing catch-up the whole time, like I missed an important scene even though I never left the room.
If you're into Daniel Craig doing an entertaining accent of questionable authenticity, and most of you have seen Knives Out so I know the answer is yes, then also this movie is fun as hell. It's just good actors doing West Virginia accents, or attempts at it, making an entertaining heist movie that you just will not regret watching. Just be prepared to feel "out of the loop" with what exactly is happening.
Although fair warning Seth MacFarlane does show up at some point. He's extremely too famous and not a good enough actor to blend into this movie. Sebastian Stan is in this movie for some reason too and his part could have literally been played by anybody which I guess he just really liked the script? Or wanted to work with Soderbergh.
Definitely watch Logan Lucky.
3/4 stars
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