Logan Lucky (2017)

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Rebecca Blunt

Stars: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig

The first scene in Logan Lucky should have been a tip off to the climactic end of the movie. Logan sees his daughter's performance and she sings the song from that first scene. This climax is not the end of the movie however. It keeps going. Afterwards he gives the money from their successful heist back and we see the fallout of that action in terms of Adam Driver's character and Joe Bang getting out of prison. There's also a weird scene where Joe gets beat up by the warden for seemingly no good reason other than maybe the warden has realised that Joe being sick means he could have escaped even though the warden can't prove it.

Joe gets out and talks to Adam Driver's character about Logan (man, I can't even remember the names of the two brothers. The main characters) and his whereabouts. He has a fancy new arm so this might be a tip off that he kept some of the money. Then there's a sequence about how he fooled the Bang brothers and kept a lot of the money. This is alongside an FBI agent investigating the crime and learning that the speedway replaced all their stolen money through insurance. The dicky race car manager and the warden are interviewed and made to look stupid, but there's nothing to those scenes just as there's nothing to the FBI investigation. The FBI Agent turns up in the bar at the end of the movie when the Logan brothers, Melly, and Joe Bang are all toasting a successful job well done. This makes me think that a sequel is being set up, but for what? Another heist?

I mean Daniel Craig as Joe Bang was great. Truth be told I thought Channing Tatum was Mark Wahlberg for most of the movie because of the type of character he was playing. Adam Driver's character was harder to get a read on. He was meek and not too bright, but protective, and willing to do whatever he needed to. Skilled as well, at least in bar tending or getting by without his arm. The Bang brothers were comic relief, as was the new husband of Logan's ex-wife. At the end her interaction as Logan was picking up his daughter makes me think that it didn't work out and she wants back with him now that he seems happier. What was Logan's character arc? He wanted to rob the raceway because he was let go from his job. His daughter already loves and adores him. He does his best for her, so it's not to be a better father or provider. In the early part of the movie his daughter is moving state and he says he's getting a lawyer to make sure that doesn't happen, but no time is spent on that being the motivation to put together the heist, and in the end he just moves state anyway.

The characters make this movie worth watching, and there are some genuinely funny moments in it (the bear in the woods was my favourite). The heist is original and not too much goes wrong so it was even weirder when the film kept going. I think perhaps it has to do with character motivation but something was missing. The soul of the film. What it's really about. I wouldn't mind seeing another film with these characters, I just would like that film to be about something and to have their motivations more defined.