Skip to footer

'Logan Lucky' is inconsequentially entertaining

( PG-13 ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

The film by Steven Soderbergh is, like the director's 'Ocean's' movies, a showcase for some funny actors to horse it up.

|
Claudette Barius/Fingerprint Releasing/Bleecker Street/AP
'Logan Lucky' stars Adam Driver (l.) and Channing Tatum (r.).
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

Steven Soderbergh’s “Logan Lucky,” written by Rebecca Blunt, is a down-home heist movie that comes across like a Southern-fried variation of one of his “Ocean's” films. Like those movies, it’s inconsequentially entertaining – a showcase for some funny actors to horse it up.

The plot centers on the robbery of the coffers of NASCAR during the Coca-Cola 600 at North Carolina's Charlotte Motor Speedway during Memorial Day weekend. The none-too-bright West Virginian Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), who has recently been laid off as a heavy equipment operator, and his equally dim Iraq War vet brother, Clyde (Adam Driver), who has a prosthetic arm and tends bar, engineer the heist with the help of a gang that also includes bank vault opener extraordinaire Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, with close-cropped blond crewcut), who is set to serve five more months in prison – a minor impediment to his involvement in the robbery, as it turns out.

The mechanics of the heist are rather sketchy, and the buddy-buddyisms could be cut by half. But the actors, including Katie Holmes as Jimmy’s ex-wife, who has sole custody of their daughter; Hilary Swank as a gimlet-eyed FBI agent; and Seth MacFarlane as an incredibly annoying British race car driver, all seem to know they are not performing Shakespeare. It’s often enjoyable and very forgettable, which may be as good as it gets for movies released in August. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for language and some crude comments.)      

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Logan Lucky' is inconsequentially entertaining
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2017/0818/Logan-Lucky-is-inconsequentially-entertaining
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe