Heist to see you again

Steven Soderbergh returns to filmmaking with the familiar caper ‘Logan Lucky’

 
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com
After he directed Side Effects, Steven Soderbergh announced he was retiring from directing feature films — he’d produce films, and he’d work in TV (including directing Behind the Candelabra and the series The Knick), but he was through with Hollywood as a big-time, Oscar-winning movie director.
That was in 2013. Didn’t last long.
Soderbergh has just released his latest directorial feature, Logan Lucky. He returned to films, he said, because he found a way to circumvent the studio system and put out a film truly independently, with the artists getting paid what they’re due instead of begging for scraps from bean-counting CPAs in corner offices. And what vehicle did he use to make this point? A story about working-class men who stick it to bean-counting CPAs in corner offices.
Big stretch, right? Not at all… in multiple respects. Not only does the film’s plot reinforce its message of scoundrels outsmarting The Man, but it’s a theme Soderbergh has revisited time and time again. Not only does Logan Lucky seem like an unofficial sequel to the Ocean’s heist movies, it also recalls Soderbergh’s cult hit Out of Sight: Hip romance, jazzy, not-too-serious pacing, whackadoo timeline jumps and a casual attitude. It’s not a thriller (the stakes never seem that high), but a procedural: How will the Logan siblings — lovable loser Jimmy (Channing Tatum), one-handed veteran Clyde (Adam Driver) and sexy sister Mellie (Riley Keough) — manage to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway and get safecracker Jack Bang (Daniel Craig) out of jail and back in before anyone notices?
The premise is delicious. The film is a lot of fun. And that’s about it.
Going back to Columbo, watching the villains getting away with a crime (until they don’t anymore) is one of the most satisfying jigsaw puzzles of plotting. The trick is to entice the audience as co-conspirators from the outset. Get them to wonder how the heist will be pulled off by establishing insurmountable obstacles … and then surmount them. Jimmy even writes a decalog of “rules” in getting the job done before he even begins. The enjoyment should come in checking off that list with him.
Only that doesn’t really happen… not entirely satisfyingly, at least. After the initial list-making, the rules aren’t consulted again until nearly the end. The mechanics of the plan less impressive than you hope, including the prison break (and return) which is not so much clever as profoundly unlikely and downright lucky. It feels, in fact, like Ocean’s 6 — Lite Edition. (Craig even gets the same tongue-in-cheek “and introducing” credit that he gave to Julia Roberts.)
Soderbergh’s biggest errors are in letting some of his actors’ performances get away from him. Katherine Waterston has the most grounded role as Tatum’s possible paramour, and the bright-eyed doofishness of Craig, Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson as hicks with more tattoos than teeth brush up to the edge of parody without crossing it. But the accent Driver gives to his dopey redneck is one step shy of Yosemite Sam (amusing, but hardly authentic)… although he’s Meryl-Frickin-Streep next to Seth McFarlane’s woefully awful British accent (I guess? Maybe Australian? Probably though Nofuckingwayistanian) and painfully cartoonish performance, including a moustache that looks like it was borrowed from the Groucho Marx Collection at Kmart.
Aside from McFarlane’s distracting (but mercifully small) role, these are mostly nitpicks. Logan Lucky feels derivative, but still worthwhile. The real puzzle is why Soderbergh chose it for his heralded comeback. He didn’t exactly challenge himself, or his audience, with something groundbreaking. But maybe that’s the result of swimming in the shark-infested waters of Hollywood. He’s treading familiar, warm waters very close to the shore. But the scenery is still relaxing.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition August 18, 2017.