It
is not exactly Le Mans, but since it usually runs over four hours, the
Coca-Cola 600 is easily the longest race of the NASCAR season. That’s a lot of
time to spend money at the concessions. Hopefully, it will also give Jimmy
Logan enough time to pull off an unlikely heist in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky (trailer here), which opens today
nationwide.
Logan
thought he would claw his way out of border state poverty playing football, but
when his knee blew out, he lost his scholarship. Work had been so scarce, he
drove all the way into North Carolina for a construction gig, but he is fired
by the cold-blooded HR department for not disclosing his limp. At least Logan
got a good look around while he was on the job repairing sink-holes under
Charlotte Motor Speedway. Turns out, there is a system of pneumatic tubes that
takes money dropped at the registers directly into the vault. It is enough to
give a fellow ideas.
If
truth be told, the Logan family could use the money. According to his brother
Clyde, there is a Logan family curse responsible for Jimmy’s knee and the hand he
lost while serving in Iraq. So far, their sister Mellie has escaped the curse,
but the beautician is hardly living on Easy Street. When his ex-wife serves
notice of her intention to move further away with his beloved daughter Sadie,
it creates a sense of urgency, so he hatches a scheme to knock over the
Speedway. In additon to his siblings, Logan will also need the help of the only
demolitions expert he knows. Unfortunately, bleach-blond Joe Bang is serving
time in prison, with his parole imminently approaching, so the Logans will have
to sneak him in and out of prison without anyone being the wiser.
Frankly,
some of the cleverest parts of the scheme revolve around that secret prison
break. Unlike most caper films since Rififi,
Soderbergh and first-time screenwriter Rebecca Blunt do not immediately explain
the full extent of their plan, opting instead to reveal it step-by-step, while
the heist is already underway. Apparently, critics on both coasts are so obsessed
with the Donald, nearly every review includes a condescending line to the
effect of: “this is Trump country, but the Logans are surprisingly likable and
dignified.” Conversely, no Western Virginian review of a Woody Allen movie
would ever feel the need to observe: “when Upper-Eastsiders are not dining at
Elaine’s, marrying their ex-wives’ adopted daughters, and hosting fundraisers
for Hillary Clinton, they are just as insecure as the rest of us.”
Regardless
who the Logans might have voted for, the suggestion Soderbergh treats them and
their milieu with respect is indeed correct. Frankly, Channing Tatum and Adam
Driver look more like real life siblings than any movie pairing since De Caprio
and Carey Mulligan appeared as near-identical twins, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan
in Baz Luhrmann’s accidentally taboo take on the Great Gatsby. As Jimmy and Clyde Logan, they convey a sense of
years of shared history and the shorthand that comes with such familiarity.
When Tatum rolls his eyes at Driver’s talk of the curse, we feel like they have
replayed this scene thousands of times before.
Yet,
the most important relationship in the film is that between Jimmy and Sadie
Logan. We can believe he would indeed risk his fabulous bachelor lifestyle to
maintain their connection and possibly scratch out better futures for them
both. A good deal of pre-release publicity has understandably focused on Daniel
Craig’s drolly eccentric and muscularly swaggering performance as Joe Bang, but
Riley Keough stands a chance of breaking through to Tatum’s level of fame
through her work as the sassy but grounded Mellie. As a bonus, Hillary Swank
and Blue Ruin’s Macon Blair nicely uphold
the Twin Peaks-X-Files tradition of
eccentric FBI agents in near cameos as the investigating Feds.