Review #1,278: 'Logan Lucky' (2017)

When Steven Soderbergh announced four years ago that he was giving up the director's gig to focus on TV, did anyone actually believe him? There was a cry of sadness from critics and audiences alike, but nothing about his announcement felt like it would last for very long. How could a man so prolific in recent years and as equally comfortable tackling a star-studded major release as he is with low-budget indies distract himself away from the temptation of the director's chair? As expected, Soderbergh is back for his first film since 2013's Behind the Candelabra, with a heist comedy described as Ocean's Eleven for the NASCAR crowd, and more amusingly, Ocean's 7-11. Logan Lucky doesn't find the director on unfamiliar ground, but it's a welcome reminder of how fine a storyteller he is.

The Logan family curse stretches back as far as the remaining members can recall, and things look to be heading downhill for Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) when he is sacked from his construction job and informed by his ex-wife (Katie Holmes) that she plans to take their daughter and her new husband miles away to Lynchburg. Jimmy's brother Clyde (Adam Driver) has returned from Iraq minus an arm and a sense of humour, and only hairdresser sister Mellie (Riley Keough) appears to have dodged the curse. Enough is enough for the once-promising footballer Jimmy, who plans to end the curse once and for all by robbing the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Key to the success of the job is colourful safe-cracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), but he currently sits in jail five months away from his release. With a few tricks of his own up his sleeve - and a comprehensive list of dos and don'ts stuck to his fridge - Jimmy aims to break Joe out, pull off the heist, and return him to his cell before anyone notices he's gone.

With fantastic performances all round from a hugely talented cast and a witty, pacy script by Rebecca Blunt, Logan Lucky is one of the most effortlessly watchable movies of 2017. The film is predictably stolen by an off-the-leash Daniel Craig who, with a buzz-cut of peroxide-blonde hair and a drawl so ridiculous it actually works in favour of the character, seems happy to be free of the high-octane stunts and extensive promotion tours that come with the role of James Bond. There are also nice smaller turns from the likes of Katherine Waterston as a good-natured nurse and former schoolmate of Jimmy, Dwight Yoakam as a prison warden eager to avoid any bad publicity, Sebastian Stan as a disgruntled, yoga-freak NASCAR driver, and Hilary Swank as a shrewd FBI agent. There are bad performances too, namely from Joe's idiotic brothers (played by Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid) who aren't nearly as funny as the film believes they are, and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane donning a distracting English accent and even more distracting hair-and-moustache combo.

It's fun, breezy and confidant in all the ways Ocean's Eleven was, only here the characters are more dim-witted and less easy on the eye. It's happy to dabble in the kind of stereotype dreamt up by outsiders, and while this helps with the appeal of Craig's larger-than-life lunatic, it also means that much of the comedy is derived from people saying and doing stupid things. Every now and then however, Soderbergh reminds us why he has been so missed, even when he's dishing out mid-table fare like Logan Lucky. Few directors can bring a heist to life with such detail and excitement - he doesn't let you in on the plan, so we have no idea just how this will pan out - and even fewer could make the site of a prosthetic arm being sucked up into a huge vacuum quite so hilarious. But the movie's high-point comes when Jimmy arrives at the last minute to witness his daughter sing John Denver's 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' to an enamoured pageant audience, and heart-strings are unexpectedly tugged. It's a shame that more of the movie can't quite live up to that scene's standards and helped to gloss over the other flaws, but for now it's certainly a "welcome back, Steven Soderbergh."


Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Seth MacFarlane, Katherine Waterston, Hilary Swank, Dwight Yoakam, Katie Holmes
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #422: 'Batman Begins' (2005)

Back in 1997, when the Batman franchise was given a thorough anal-raping and given cinema AIDS by director Joel Schumacher with the preposterous Batman & Robin, fans and audiences alike were left wondering if there was any hope left for one of the darkest and most complex 'superhero' characters in the comic-book world. Come 2005, up to this point, British director Christopher Nolan was still a relative maverick, having made indie breakthrough Following (1998), the mind-bending critical hit Memento (2000), and the solid re-make Insomnia (2002). Few realised that they were about to witness a re-defining of not only comic book adaptations, but blockbusters themselves.

We first meet Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a Bhutanese prison, where he is approached by the mysterious Ducard (Liam Neeson) who offers him a chance to learn to fight with the League of Shadows, a generations-old group that punishes criminality with an iron fist. As he trains, we learn about Wayne's childhood, where after falling into a well and developing a phobia of bats, witnesses his parents' murder. Returning to a Gotham believing him dead and in a state of utter tutmoil, he turns to faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and Wayne Enterprises' weapons developer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to turn him into a vigilante crime-fighter and a symbol of a stance against crime. He finds his childhood friend Rachel (Katie Holmes), the assistant district attorney, caught up in a scheme ran by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) to get mob boss Falcone's (Tom Wilkinson) thugs off with insanity pleas.

Tim Burton's once-definitive Batman (1989) made the mistake of having the film's villain The Joker engulf the majority of the film, keeping Michael Keaton's Batman almost in the background. Nolan knows that this is Batman's story, and wisely keeps the focus on Bale's anger-fuelled, guilt-ridden, and honourable leading character. In the hands of Nolan, Batman's origins are given the complexity it deserves, shifting back and forward in time to reveal more pieces to his jigsaw. This is no wise-cracking, tights-wearing Batman; when we meet him, he is giving a bunch of prison thugs a thorough beating, snapped legs and all. With the hugely talented Bale in the role, his character is given the weight it deserves - this is Nolan's world, and it is violent, real, and usually pissing down with rain.

As the norm since this film's release, Nolan has managed to gather a hugely-talented ensemble cast (and mainly British). While there is no obligatory main villain that may be a problem in anybody's else's hands, Nolan has instead given us a criminal ring for Batman to fight, from Wilkinson's ruthless crime boss, to Murphy's genuinely unsettling Scarecrow, who likes to fire his hallucinogenic poison in his victims' faces before donning his 'mask' (leading some some fine trippy moments). There is also Ra's Al-Ghul (Ken Watanabe), who plans to destroy Gotham along with Neeson's Ducard by infecting Gotham's water supply. With Gary Oldman's cop Jim Gordon, and Holmes' Rachel Dawes also in the mix, it may seem dangerously over-supplied with characters, but Nolan knows fully well how to handle such a large cast, tying their stories together with fine precision.

Having seen The Dark Knight (2008) and eagerly anticipating The Dark Knight Rises (2012), this admittedly pales in comparison, being that The Dark Knight was a phenomenal leap forward in big-budget film-making and an iconic film that will no doubt be remembered as one of the best of its decade. Also, the action scenes here are quickly-edited and shaky to the point where it is hard to tell what is happening, but Nolan would step up in confidence with the film's sequel and the proceeding Inception (2010). But as superhero origin stories go, this is probably second only to Superman (1978), and a welcome kick up the arse for one of the most enticing comic-book heroes in existence.


Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe
Country: USA/UK

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie