Written by Rebecca Blunt and directed by Steven Soderbergh, Logan Lucky is a comedy heist film in which the Logan brothers Jimmy (Channing Tatum) & Clyde (Adam Driver) aim to break the Logan family curse by robbing a high-stakes NASCAR raceway during the busiest weekend of the year. This film brought Soderbergh out of retirement to direct as he was initially sought out to give a recommendation for applicable directors, but he ended up enjoying the script so much that he chose to direct it and simultaneously use it as a test subject for an independent distribution model of his own design, “Fingerprint Releasing”. Which turned out to be the right choice as Logan Lucky is a no frills, charming, and surprisingly intelligent redneck MacGyver version of Soderbergh’s past heist films like Ocean’s Eleven.

Jimmy Logan works construction at the Charlotte Motor Speedway- that is until he’s fired by unseen insurance bureaucrats who spotted his limp and found him to be a liability. Choosing to find solace in brotherhood Jimmy soon makes his way to his brother Clyde’s bar where we first hear Clyde rambling off superstitions about the family curse. Given the brothers’ apt nature towards bad luck, with Clyde missing an arm- sorry- a hand, in the Iraq war and Jimmy’s leg injury keeping him from his youthful ambitions at national level football, the curse could have merit from this perspective. We soon meet Jimmy’s daughter Sadie who’s working hard to win a local beauty pageant, and through Jimmy’s estranged ex-wife we learn of her plans to move with her new husband out of state and away from Jimmy. Thus, our motivation inherent. From here the movie picks up its pace as the pieces begin to fall into place for the eventual heist. The Logans know of an infamous local safecracker named Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) whose been imprisoned. They go meet him and they unveil their plan to entice him into helping them break into the vault under the speedway. He isn’t too keen on the idea as he only has five months to go until his release, that is until they tell him that they plan on sneaking him out for the job, but then also sneaking him back into the prison without anyone knowing he was gone in the first place. Bang only has one condition, the Logan brothers must enlist his own two brothers to insure his interests until his sentence is up. The Logans’ also enlist the help of their sister (Riley Keough) as a transport driver during the shuffle of retrieving Joe and Clyde (his incarceration is also part of the plan) from the prison during a planned riot.

This film was an absolute joy from start to finish. The characters are never portrayed in a demeaning light and they all have an earnest sensibility about them as they go about their illegalities. Soderbergh brings a specific framing and polish to the film that may have been mishandled in another’s stead, while also crafting an edit that fills in the details as soon as you begin to question the choices certain characters make. It seems the director has cemented his return to filmmaking through this release and his upcoming film titled Unsane, Soderbergh’s first dip into the horror/thriller genre, which he also plans to release independently through Fingerprint Releasing and Bleecker Street once again. I know I’ll be looking forward to it based on how good Logan Lucky turned out. Soderbergh and his crew brought together an excellent cast and drew out some truly memorable performances from his actors while keeping everything light and fun. We can only hope for the success of more independent features like this!

(Adam Driver & Daniel Craig pose with director Steven Soderbergh while on production)

Final Score: Three Lucky Logans & One infamous Joe Bang!