By: Omair Alavi Remember Ocean’s Eleven … where 11 dashing men robbed a Casino because the owner was dating their boss’s wife? Well, the director of that franchise Steven Soderbergh returns to mainstream ‘heist’ films with Logan Lucky where he has replaced the dashing men with a few losers and given a lower-middle class backstory…
SAMAA | Omair Alavi – Posted: Sep 12, 2017 | Last Updated: 4 years ago
By: Omair Alavi
Remember Ocean’s Eleven … where 11 dashing men robbed a Casino because the owner was dating their boss’s wife? Well, the director of that franchise Steven Soderbergh returns to mainstream ‘heist’ films with Logan Lucky where he has replaced the dashing men with a few losers and given a lower-middle class backstory to all of them. Their main aim is to rob a vault full of money because they are out of luck, out of cash but not out of man and girl power.
The Plot
Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) was once the poster boy of local football but after an injury, he was reduced to odd jobs, from one of which he was fired ‘due to liability issues’. He decides to have his revenge on the Motor Speedway company where he was working as a construction worker and recruits his one-armed Iraq-war veteran brother Clyde (Adam Driver), sister Mellie (Riley Keough) and expert safecracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig in an unrecognizable role) along with his two dim-witted brothers Sam and Fish (Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid). Their aim was to steal as much money as possible from the Speedway’s pneumatic tube system and then disappear for good.
The Good
Who doesn’t love a good heist film where the rich get poor and the poor get rich, even if it is for the wrong reasons! Channing Tatum is brilliant as poor man’s Danny Ocean and his team consists of losers like him. One of them is the current James Bond but don’t expect the same kind of heroics from Daniel Craig who is in-car-ce-ra-ted in this flick and helps the guys out only because he is the only one who can. The plot is simple but it’s the execution that keeps the audience waiting for the action to happen. The comedy element is also fresh; especially the scene where Joe Bang explains his Bang formula to his colleagues and the result is bombastic!
The Bad
The film is 2 hours long but it could have been shorter, especially after the heist was successfully pulled off. To include Two-Time Academy Award winner Hillary Swank for just a few scenes (and for a possible sequel) slowed the narration and the audience got bored for no fault of their own. The supporting cast including some big names such as Sebastian Stan, Katie Holmes and Seth MacFarlane didn’t have much to do except for a few scenes and it would have been better had they got a little more time on the screen like superstar Daniel Craig and producer Channing Tatum.
Verdict – 3/5
Fans of the Ocean’s franchise might not be able to see any more addition in the series but Logan Lucky is in the same vein and with a cliffhanger ending, the director might have teased us for the sequel. It is a well-choreographed heist film where the motive is not as important as the outcome; you might be in for a surprise as all parties go home happy, something that is a rarity by Hollywood standards.
