★★★☆☆
BACK in 2013 incomparable director Steven Soderbergh – the cinematic voice behind everything from Traffic to the Ocean’s trilogy to Magic Mike – announced his retirement from feature filmmaking. But alas that plan hasn’t stuck as he’s back with a not always successful but nevertheless enjoyable, almost aggressively irreverent lark of a heist film.
The Logan of the title pertains to Jimmy (Channing Tatum), once a promising American football star-turned construction worker who gets fired from his job due to liability with his insurance and squabbles with his ex-wife Bobbie Joe (Katie Holmes) for custody of their daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie).
Struggling for money, he approaches his one-armed Iraq War veteran brother Clyde (Adam Driver), Clyde’s wife Mellie (Riley Keough) and “incar-cer-a-ted” safecracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig like you’ve never seen him before) to help him rob the local stock car racing event. Will the family’s so-called Logan curse follow them down their road to riches?
One of the film’s notable lines describes the ramshackle crew’s daring theft as being like “Ocean’s 7-11”. There doesn’t exist a better line to sum up the film’s intentions and tone; a kind of Hicksville, dusty-kneed, DIY version of that slicker Las Vegas robbery, at once meta and sincere in how it goes about its Hillbilly heist hijinks.
Its obvious comparisons range from the work of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers to being a jovial send-up of the likes of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and Soderbergh’s own Out Of Sight. And yet it has a quirky personality all of its own and a charismatic, perhaps overegged confidence that, if it could, would strut around the racing track like a proud peacock.
It’s packed with enjoyably idiosyncratic supporting characters; Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson as Joe Bang’s knucklehead cousins who claim to be computer experts (“All the Twitters. I know ’em.”), and Seth MacFarlane as a Cockney and cocky racing driver, to name but a couple. They pepper a quippy, energetic narrative that tonally flails all over the place due to it trying to do a few too many things at once and has as many missed opportunities as it does comedic gold packed into its overlong runtime.
The process of the heist itself is well done, drip-feeding us info about what’s really going on and carving out an enjoyable realisation moment that Soderbergh so perfected with Danny Ocean and his crew many years ago. However, the late arrival of Hilary Swank as a government agent hell-bent on catching the brothers Logan red-handed goes nowhere, as does a subplot involving Katherine Waterston as a blood-taking nurse only really in there to make some vague point about the state of the American healthcare system.
Flawed but entertaining, it may be far from Soderbergh’s finest hour but it’s nice to have him back and clearly having a ball.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here