Illustration by Michael DiMilo
Oceans 7 Eleven: Review of Logan Lucky
★★★☆☆
By Geoff Carter
One of the benefits of streaming TV is access to lesser known independent, international, and obscure films. I like to try and keep up with the latest, but movies like A Ghost Story, Gueros, Problemista, El Conde, and Hit Man would have flown directly under my radar (and initially did) were it not for Netflix, Hulu, or Prime Video. Some of these hidden gems didn’t come to my attention even after they’d been around for a few years. There are so many quality production companies working today that it’s just hard to keep up.
According to Statista, in 2020 (pre-pandemic), 823 new films were released in the U.S. and Canada, a number which does not take into account movies from Europe, India, Mexico, and elsewhere. In 2000, only 371 were released. This is above and beyond cable series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Bear, and dozens of others, so it’s easy to miss a few here and there.
Back in 2017, one film that somehow flew under my radar was Logan Lucky, directed by Stephen Soderbergh and starring Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, and Channing Tatum. Mr. Soderbergh is an innovative filmmaker known for his unorthodox use of camera formats, sequencing, and avant-garde film techniques. He is often cited as the father of independent filmmaking. I was impressed with the pedigree, so I cued it up.
Logan Lucky is a crime film that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Oceans 11 trilogy, also directed by Mr. Soderbergh. Taking place in West Virginia, the narrative follows Jimmy Logan (Tatum) a construction worker who is fired from his job shoring up the landfill underneath The Charlotte Motor Speedway because he failed to inform his employer of an old football injury—a pre-existing condition. Faced with unemployment and the fact that his ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) will be moving away with his daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie) and her rich new husband Moody (David Denham) to be near his new car dealership, Jimmy is forced to come up with a plan to make some quick money.
Teaming up with his brother Clyde (Driver), an Iraq War veteran who lost his hand in action, and his sister Mellie (Riley Keough), a quirky hairdresser who loves to drive fast, Jimmy comes up with a plan to rob The Speedway. While working under the racetrack, Jimmy stumbled upon the pneumatic tube system the concessions at the facilities use to send their cash directly to the bank vault and hatches a plan to use them to get into the vault.
Realizing they need a safecracker, Jimmy and Clyde enlist the services of Joe Bang (Craig) who happens to be serving time at the Monroe Correctional Facility. The brothers visit Joe, who says that if they can get him out of prison—and return him—long enough to blow the safe, he’s in. Bang agrees, provided they include his idiot brothers Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson) in the scheme.
The Logan Brothers’ convoluted plan includes getting Clyde thrown into prison, an ingenious breakout scheme, painted cockroaches, a surprise birthday party, a credit card outage at the track, and—of course—a final ingenious twist. Soderbergh is a master of the new caper genre. In the Oceans trilogy, he was able to construct an urbane milieu of ingenious and sophisticated criminals pulling off a series of major heists to not only enrich themselves, but to stick it to the “bad guys” who have slighted them—to commit righteous crimes.
Logan Lucky is built on the same template as the Oceans films. Jimmy decides to rob the company which fired him and putting custody with his daughter in jeopardy, and to target arrogant race team owner Max Chilblain (Seth McFarlane) who insulted the Logans. Even the dimwitted Bang brothers insist to the Logans that they will not participate unless they have a “moral reason” for doing it, which Jimmy and Clyde scramble to provide. It’s not that the Logans don’t have a reason to get back at the track owners—it’s just that the Bangs wouldn’t get it.
Logan Lucky is a well-constructed caper movie that, like the Oceans trilogy, is light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, and genuinely funny. One of the characters even calls the racetrack robbery Oceans 7 Eleven. The characters of Sam and Fish seem to be formed from the same mold as the Malloy brothers in the Oceans flick. They are clueless bumblers, sort of like hillbilly Keystone Cops. Joe Bang’s brusque manner is only a front for his goofy sort of tough-guy persona. Mellie is a bit of a cipher, but the scene in which she discovers that her painted cockroaches have been successful is delightful.
Logan Lucky is not a deep or a complex film. It is fun, a bit of a guilty pleasure. The characters and the plot are solid, but the West Virginia milieu seems to be out of place. The Oceans trilogy is set in Las Vegas, the capitalist center of the universe. Logan is set in Charlotte, the NASCAR center of the world. And NASCAR is everywhere in the film. From race footage to shots of the track garages to race commentators’ descriptions of the track itself, Logan Lucky is a tribute to product placement.
Transplanting the narrative template of a sophisticated and ingenious criminal enterprise into the backwoods of West Virginia seems contrived and a little bit forced. It’s not that the good citizens of Appalachia lack the smarts or grit to take on the man, but Tatum’s portrayal of Jimmy Logan as a criminal mastermind is not nearly as believable—or as slick—as George Clooney’s Danny Oceans. It just isn’t as believable.
In fact, Tatum gives a strangely flat performance as Jimmy Logan. He is not nearly as charming (in their weird ways) as Joe or Clyde and seems oddly detached from the whole enterprise. Compared to the rest of the ensemble, his characterization seems to weigh down the action rather than drive it.
All in all, Logan Lucky is a fun and entertaining film that is nothing more than it claims to be. While the Appalachian setting seems a little misplaced, the ingenuity of the robbery and the playful interactions of characters are great fun. Because, after all, who, whether in Vegas or Charlotte or Anywhere, USA, doesn’t like to stick it to the man?
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