Logan Lucky

Logan Lucky

It’s interesting to see how after a sort-of drought in the heist genre, we get two quality entries this year with Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver and — the brought-back-from-retirement — Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. Both are stylized takes on the classic genre: featuring smart quirky dialogue, charming leads, and a periphery populated by colorful oddball characters. But while Baby Driver provides fast-paced, highly kinetic thrills through its meticulously choreographed car chases, curated soundtrack, and guns-blazing shootouts; Logan Lucky takes a more laid-back, rather a pacifist approach. It deliberately subdues heist genre tropes in exchange for heart and altruism.

Logan Lucky is about coal miner Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) who recently got retrenched from his job as his pre-existing limp is taken note of by his employers (the same injury that put a stop to his fledgling high-school football career). Being screwed by the system, he recruits his amputee Iraq veteran brother, Clyde (Adam Butler), in his scheme to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway’s underground vault during Memorial Day weekend. Together they put together a crew consisting of their speed freak/beautician sister Mellie (Riley Keough), “in-car-ce-ray-ted” explosion’s expert Joe Bang (a cast out of type Daniel Craig), and Joe’s now born-again brothers.

Described by director Steven Soderbergh as a “hillbilly heist,” location itself is a character in Logan Lucky. The West Virginia countryside in the film is used to the same effect as the snowy hills of the Coen Brother’s Fargo. The rich environment lends much to how the characterization is fleshed-out and how, in general, the film’s plot unfolds. It uses this “what-if” scenario to transpose genres to locales one wouldn’t normally associate them with. Specifically, it looks at how the normally best-laid plans, as seen in the likes of Heat and the Ocean’s series, can be pulled-off by preconceived “simple folk” without the prerequisite “smarts” and technology of its genre predecessors. It’s street smarts and blue overalls over genius and sleek suits.

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Fitting to its country road laid-back setting, there’s this cool ease that accompanies the film throughout its elements. It is the cinematic equivalent of lounging by the front porch, iced tea in hand, watching cars zip on right by the cornfields. The film is subdued, controlled, deliberate in how it doles out its plot, humor, and pacing; deliberate not in a slow way but deliberate in that it knows when to release its punches and when to kick its feet up the couch. Logan Lucky‘s humor is driven by its dialogue, the wit of is plot through the fun McGyver-esque machinations. The whole simplicity of the blue-collar DIY culture permeates in manners that don’t feel contrived but rather amusing.

Though the central premise may be locale transposition, Logan Lucky‘s main hook is its heart. While many crime films try to unsheathe man’s capacity for greed, selfishness, and just about all-around evil (usually carrying this crime-doesn’t-pay morality to it), Logan Lucky decides to use crime as a counter-weight that elevates the good-heartedness of the film’s lead gentleman thieves. Jimmy and Clyde Logan are merely victims of the system trying to cash in on good luck for once. They are not there to topple the system but just somehow even the scales a little bit. This can be seen in an entry in thier heist checklist “don’t be greedy;” greed is not what motivates the crew but the chance for equity and generosity.

In the grander scale of things, I think Logan Lucky is there not to just show the altruism of the ensemble they feature but that of the heart of the country land they represent, Middle America. These are the voiceless that are often neglected by the system: army veterans lacking pension, disabled workers retrenched, medical institutions in need of donations. Aside from the culture of Nascar, child beauty pageants, and country music; there are sentiments that are echoed in this film — those of broken dreams and neglect. Maybe it too would be our choice as viewers to either give thought to the seemingly forgotten or just take in the fun and cheer of the film and continue on with the culture that gave rise to the likes of Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPzvKH8AVf0

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