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Weekend Watch is here for you. Every Friday we’re going to recommend the best of what’s new to rent on VOD or stream for free. It’s your weekend; allow us to make it better.
What to Stream This Weekend
Movie: Logan Lucky
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig
Available on: Amazon Video and iTunes
It’s been a short four years since Steven Soderbergh retired from filmmaking, after the theatrical release of Side Effects and the HBO premiere of Behind the Candelabra. You could understand the impulse to at least take a break. In a five-year stretch from 2009-2013, Soderbergh directed eight movies, including The Girlfriend Experience, Contagion, Magic Mike, and Haywire. I can’t imagine anyone ever truly expected that someone as prolific as Soderbergh would actually hang up his jersey, but even for a short-lived Hollywood “retirement,” Soderbergh’s was awfully busy. He produced movies like Citizenfour and Magic Mike XXL (the latter of which he served as cinematographer) and TV shows The Girlfriend Experience and The Knick (the latter of which he directed all 20 episodes).
So even though Logan Lucky marks Soderbergh’s official “return” to feature film directing after a four-year absence, it’s really hard to call it a comeback. But whatever you call it, Logan Lucky is a welcome sight at the movies. An ensemble heist comedy that recalls the star-studded, free-wheeling fun of Ocean’s Eleven with the folks-on-the-margins vibes of Magic Mike and the arch comedy of something like The Informant!, Logan Lucky can sometimes feel like Soderbergh easing back into the pool by wading through his old familiars. But there are more than a few moments where Soderbergh’s gifts for stringing together a caper feel as sharp as they’ve ever been. And when those gifts meet a quartet of committed and super-fun performances from Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, and Daniel Craig, it’s tough not to be incredibly thankful to have Soderbergh back doing his thing.
The heist at the center of Logan Lucky is being carried off by brothers Jimmy and Clyde Logan (Tatum and Driver). Jimmy needs the money to pay for legal costs in fighting for shared custody of his daughter, while Clyde is a loyal (if glumly pessimistic) brother. They’re looking to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway via a complicated scam that heavily relies on Jimmy’s knowledge of the pneumatic tube system used therein. The fact that Jimmy’s a laid-off construction worker and Clyde a veteran with a conspicuous prosthetic hand gives the film an air of social relevance, and while Soderbergh seems enthusiastic about the idea of his characters banding together to take back from a society that’s made them collateral damage, the attempts to draw any sense of sociopolitical import are the film’s weakest spots. Better just to go full speed ahead with Redneck Ocean’s Eleven and be as kind and generous to the characters as you go along, and on this front, Soderbergh largely succeeds.
The Logan brothers — whose family’s streak for misfortune gives the film its ironic title — recruit incarcerated safe-cracker Joe Bang (Craig) for the job, and breaking him out of prison ends up as one more spoke on this plan’s spinning wheel. Craig is hamming it up and having the time of his life as a bleach-blond master of his craft, a man whose cockiness is only juuuust matched by his skill. It’s a very Jason-Statham-in-Spy performance, and that’s not half bad, all things considered. The boys also get help from Logan sister Mellie (Keough), whose distinct flavor of laconic warmth and an eagerness to get in the game proves to be an irresistible combination. Mellie is far from crucial to the plot, but Logan Lucky would be short on a lot of charm without her. The familial bond between Tatum, Driver, and Keough feels incredibly strong, and it’s a credit to all three actors that they establish this without a whole lot of fuss.
It’s that bond that turbo-charges the fun, bouncy caper scenes, giving the audience a rooting interest amid all the NASCAR gags and clever bait-and-switches. Adam Driver in particular strikes such a note of sweet decency as the family-first Clyde, a vibe that deepens every self-evidently hilarious line reading. He’s become such a fascinating screen persona in such a short time, playing at times into and at times away from his own big-ness. Clyde often appears to shrink away from the world except for when the Logan name is invoked.
Soderbergh follows his film down quite a few alleys — pneumatic tubes of his own, crossing paths and whizzing past us quickly — and they don’t all pan out. Tatum has a recurring flirtation with a mobile-clinic care provider played by Katherine Waterston, and the pair are surprisingly cute together. Katie Holmes, meanwhile, plays Tatum’s ex-wife with the desperation of a woman holding onto her accent with the tips of her acrylics (she’s failing). Jack Quaid (son of Dennis and Meg Ryan) and Brian Gleeson (son of Brendan and brother of Domhnall) play Joe Bang’s idiot brothers who are introduced as they’re tossing toilet seats like horseshoes, and somehow they work, but Hillary Swank as a late-in-the-game FBI agent with a bizarrely controlled cadance is a misfire. Sometimes what works and doesn’t work is down the same alley, as it is with NASCAR drivers played with Tom Brady-esque physical confidence by Sebastian Stan (fun!) and grating, Brit-accented bombast by Seth Macfarlane (no!).
Of course, little character experiments that may or may not pan out is often part of the Soderbergh ride. As grating as the Macfarlane character is, he’s also a bit of a reminder that we’ve got Soderbergh back making heist movies again and seemingly having a great damn time in the process. It’s nice to see someone enjoying themselves in 2017.
