Logan Lucky

I was going to give the film two stars but ended up adding a third one thanks to the second half. Once again, Channing Tatum failed to convince me that he's an actor. The only performance worth mentioning was Daniel Craig’s. I wasn't particularly enjoying the film until about halfway through, which is when things got slightly better, but I still felt like I I'd seen it all before (several times). (01/25/2018)

“They’re going to know what we want them to know.” Logan Lucky is an inventive and humorous mix of a social drama from working-class life and a heist film, a prison-escape flick and a movie about swindling, where mainly the viewer is the one being conned. There is no traditional antagonist whom the protagonists would try to outwit. It is not until the final act that the narrative is enhanced with a character who goes for the throat of the gang around Jimmy (and who is played by an actress famous enough for you to suspect that she won’t simply give up), thanks to which the film is thrilling even after the action. Soderbergh doesn’t cut directly to the chase and, in the opening part of the film, spends a relatively long time on developing the characters and fleshing out their social environment (thus the two-hour runtime makes sense), which he puts to good use in the emotionally charged climax, when I found myself alternating between emotion, amusement and (eventually) dismay in quick succession. Thanks to meaningful “backstories”, understandable motivations and a well-chosen cast, Logan Lucky, unlike other crime comedies, doesn’t lose its persuasiveness even when it asks us to sympathise with characters who sometimes say and do strange things, but for the most part, they are not one-dimensional comedic characters and their behaviour is relatively consistent throughout the film. Even charmingly bizarre, mostly unexplained moments, such as the password “cauliflower” and the taking of a bag from the “bear’, and moments that are entertaining because they are explained in too much detail (making a bomb out of gummy bears) fit flawlessly with the poetic nature of the film. As usual, Soderbergh takes extra care to ensure that nothing that happens in the film comes across as random (without motivation). As gradually becomes apparent, the film is well thought out down to the smallest detail. Soderbergh very skilfully utilises the protagonist’s favourite song, the character of his former classmate, the fact that he doesn’t own a mobile telephone and the special “salt” that Joe Bang sprinkles on his boiled eggs. The careful composition with very clever distribution of information goes hand in hand with Soderbergh’s patient direction of individual scenes. He knows exactly when to cut (and, conversely, when to stay in one place with the camera), where to place the camera so that the shot not only tells us everything important but is also funny, and how to shoot action so that we don’t lose our bearings in the given space. Logan Lucky may appear to be a mere first-class genre movie, but it offers so many premium “services” that I have no problem giving it a full five-star rating and ranking it among this year’s most satisfying cinematic experiences. 90% (08/31/2017)

An indie take on Ocean’s Eleven. It has spark, the unobtrusive elegance of the central gang with the exuberance of rednecks instead of neon, the countryside and hot babes (Riley Keough, Katie Holmes). It’s not quite a dud, but unlike the elegant version of a heist, it's less watchable and more niche for a specific target audience who will enjoy this down-to-earth setting full of mongs and lots of deliberately absurd scenes. The second half is a notch better than the first with the introductions. (02/03/2018)

Who wants to watch the perfumed masters of the thievery craft in a well-fitting suit today... It's a white trash world. Soderbergh is back with another genre short circuit, which is not even a little blunt, even though it looks that way at first glance. A manically constructed, deliberately subversive, economically ridiculous indie mutation of the heist genre, which perhaps loses out where one expects the biggest attraction (robbery), but it makes up for it where Ocean's Eleven was completely powerless - on a social level. You can sympathize with the Logan’s group in the most ordinary of things. When John Denver's hackneyed song sounds from the mouth of a disgustingly painted child, it's unexpectedly the best thing ever. An ode to being a loser, a film sneering at the pompous American facade, but equally sensitive to characters from the periphery... it's not a completely smooth ride, but it's something you can easily fall in love with. Steven returns dignity to the rednecks. That is not the only reason why it is good that he returned to the screen. (08/31/2017)

A film about a bunch of assholes, completely different from the usual Hollywood films. The Logan brothers are retarded. One is all muscles and the other one is missing a hand, so he is truly crippled. For their break-in gang they also recruit Daniel Craig, who is at the time sitting in jail with one last month of desperate staring into the wall left. However, they come up with an idea how to take him along, even though he is in jail, which gives the whole thing an absurd dimension. The film is funny at times, especially when there is a rebellion in jail because they do not have the newest volume of The Game of Thrones source book series in their library. Otherwise, it is your usual average film. For a while the absurdity reminded me of the Coen brothers’ stories, the only difference being that their characters and dialogues are way funnier than in this film. (01/27/2018)