‘Logan Lucky is an easy movie to like, but maybe not love.
In his big return to film after a four-year hiatus (or retirement, if it can even be called that now), Steven Soderbergh has created a sort of cinematic bingo of his well of tricks. Heist movie? Check. Channing Tatum? Check. Not so subtle metaphors slipped in to genre stories about the state of the working class man? Check. Dopey but reliable sidekick brothers? Check, check, check.
That’s not to say that Logan Lucky has nothing new to offer – it just feels unshakably familiar in a way that could irk some and feel like home to others.
The setting for this heist is West Virginia, where Tatum’s Jimmy Logan has just been laid off from his coal mining job because one of the higher-ups spotted him walking around with a limp. Like a distant cousin to Magic Mike, who supplemented waning construction work with stripping, Jimmy Logan is another side of the American dream dashed. Once a high school football star with a promising future, Jimmy has ended up in the same place where he began, only slightly worse. He’s also got a young daughter, Sadie (a precocious and adorable Farrah Mackenzie), and an ex-wife (Katie Holmes) who has traded up for a middle class husband (David Denman) and may be moving across state lines imminently.
His brother, Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) is a slow-talkin’ bartender who lost one of his arms serving in Iraq, but can still make a killer martini when an arrogant NASCAR sponsor played by Seth MacFarlane challenges him. And his sister, Mellie Logan (Riley Keough), is a no-nonsense hairdresser who wears acrylics, drives a stick and has no time for try-hards like her ex-sister-in-law’s new husband.
The Logans, simply, are not going anywhere anytime soon.