LOGAN LUCKY

Steven Soderbergh directed the classic modern heist movie with the remake of Ocean's Eleven, so it's oddly appropriate that years he'd direct a heist movie with a redneck spin.  Logan Lucky takes the planned heist to a different level, appropriate for its West Virginia-Charlotte, NC setting.

The Logan family has infamously bad luck, and that's certainly true for Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum).  He just got fired from a construction job for not revealing his limp.  His ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) is considering moving out of West Virginia with their young daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie).  And Sadie wants her dad to attend her performance at a child beauty pageant.  And it looks like Jimmy has no money.

What Jimmy does have is a plan.  At his last job he worked on fixing sinkholes at a North Carolina racetrack, he knows how the money is moved to the vault, and he puts together a crew to steal it.  There's Clyde Logan (Adam Driver), Jimmy's bartender brother who lost much of his left arm in the Gulf War.  There's Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), the explosives expert who's unfortunately incarcerated.  There are Joe's brothers Fish and Sam Bang (Jack Quaid, Brian Gleeson) who can provide computer support.  ("All the Twitters, I know 'em.")  And there's Mellie Logan (Riley Keough), Jimmy and Clyde's sister, who can provide speedy driving.  When the plan has to be moved up a week, the gang finds themselves working during a NASCAR race -- with far more security than normal.

Logan Lucky is both different and familiar at the same time.  The movie skips the usual Hollywood beauties and casual upper middle class wealth of most movies (and television shows, for that matter) for a look at a far more Southern lower-class lifestyle.  This is played for laughs sometimes, but there's also a bit of pride there: One of the most moving moments is a sing-along of Bob Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads."  Besides that, though, the heist itself is something we've seen numerous times before (including from Soderbergh), with perfect timing, incompetent authorities and security, and a good deal of suspension of disbelief.  The cast has fun, and the end result is enjoyable enough.

Overall grade: B-
Reviewed by James Lynch