“Logan Lucky” is directed by Steven Soderbergh who also directed “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Magic Mike.” This movie stars Channing Tatum (Magic Mike, 21 Jump Street), Adam Driver (Girls, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens), and Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Cowboys & Aliens) and is about two brothers who try to pull of a heist while a NASCAR race in North Carolina is going down.
Going into this movie, I’ve had some experience with Steven Soderbergh. And by some, I mean not much at all. I’ve watched part of “Ocean’s Eleven,” which is a heist movie that takes place in Vegas, I fell asleep. For the record, I wasn’t bored, it was late. I was at my grandparents and I was in a sofa bed with my father, we were watching this at one point during the night. I haven’t watched it again since, but I know a lot of people like it. “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Ocean’s Thirteen” from what I heard aren’t as good as “Ocean’s Eleven.” This guy also did “Magic Mike,” which I haven’t seen, but from what I gathered, the movie might as well be called “Look at Channing’s Gigantic Tatum!”, which saying that now, is kind of interesting considering how Channing Tatum is in this movie, who we will get into in just a moment.
Here’s something I just want to get out about “Ocean’s Eleven,” while I recall it putting me to sleep, what I witnessed on screen wasn’t all that boring.. I’ll tell you guys, and a lot of people are gonna probably call me a nincompoop, type comments in all capitals or comments suggesting that you want me to die, or simply say I have the brain capacity of Patrick Star from “Spongebob Squarepants,” despite what I said, I’ll get something off my chest. …This movie was BORING. This is probably the most dull movie I’ve seen since “The Girl on the Train” which came out last year! What was boring about it? Well, let’s start with the basics, and by the basics I mean just about everything the movie has to offer!
When it comes to the pacing, it almost felt like it was a bunch of different movies crammed into one. There was the meat of the film, which was the heist, then you have this drama involving a couple of exes, then you have this father-daughter relationship film which felt like “Gifted,” a movie that a lot of people ended up enjoying but I couldn’t, you know, kind of like this movie. Part of the movie also felt like it had part of the finale of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” with less humor, which actually does fit in terms of tone, although it took place in the middle of the movie as opposed to the end.
I also have to say that as far as character motivation goes, it really could have been improved. I like the cast, but the characters which the cast ended up playing were not that well written or executed. You have characters you either don’t give a s*it about, you have forgettable characters, and you also have one character that’s a little too cartoony for the movie he’s in. In terms of his looks and attitude, he reminded me of Nux in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” a character who works in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” but when it comes to “Logan Lucky,” this isn’t really the adequate time to yell about how lovely your day is. If you witness Daniel Craig, there’s a scene where he laughs and it’s kind of embarrassing.
The first character I’m gonna talk about in depth is played by Channing Tatum, he’s known in the movie as Jimmy Logan, and while he may have been fired at the beginning of the movie because of a preexisting condition, I didn’t feel any sort of connection to his character. This is partially due to how, as mentioned, the movie jumped back and forth between too many subplots and tons of exposition. I mean, getting fired from your job and not earning as much money as you once did is one reason that one would like to go on a heist, but I just didn’t care, something REALLY felt off. The other characters didn’t really seem to have much of a motivation, Daniel Craig’s character probably wanted to get away from jail, but that’s probably the only hint of motivation that I recall from this movie if it was even there.
Adam Driver was also in this movie as Jimmy’s brother, Clyde. The only quality that was even the least bit redeeming about the character was probably his fake arm. Clyde’s fake arm probably had more of a story that I cared about than Clyde himself. One of the movie’s best parts actually involved the arm. There was one scene where the characters were using a vacuum, and it ends up sucking the arm.
Now let’s dive into a character I thought would be interesting, but turned out to be lackluster. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Daniel Craig’s Joe Bang. Walking out of the movie, I don’t recall much of anything from his character, for the most part, Daniel Craig gave a good performance, but there was one moment that took me out of the film, which was his cartoony laugh I was talking about earlier.
And that’s the thing about this movie, it has a stellar cast, it has likable performances, including one from a child actress that wasn’t bad at all. Everyone sounded like they were from the south. In terms of costumes, yeah, technically these aren’t costumes but you get my point, it all suited the characters quite well. When it comes to aspects of the movie itself, it feels like the right vibe is there, but overall you have this s*itpile of a movie so it doesn’t feel like everything is being hit in the sweet spot.
Also, you can kind of say this is somewhat like “The Hunger Games” because I remember it taking it forever in those movies to actually get to the Hunger Games. This is said to be a heist movie, but this feels more like an exposition movie with a heist somewhere in the mix. This may have worked if I cared about the characters a bit more, but I basically said what I needed to say about them. Oh yeah, I forgot, there were a lot of other characters, including some played by big names such as Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, American Dad!), Hilary Swank (Insomnia, Boys Don’t Cry), and Katie Holmes (Batman Begins, Dawson’s Creek), those characters aren’t worth talking about all that much. I mean, I didn’t care for just about anyone in this movie, the characters are basically random people with names inserted into a script and then transferred into something that might qualify as a film.
In the end, “Logan Lucky” was a HARD movie to review. This is partially because of my unpopular opinion and the fact that I actually did experience glimmers of enjoyment during segments of the film. I wanted to like this movie, especially because the rest of the Internet does. This has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes as of now, which is higher than “Interstellar,” one of my favorite movies of all time. If you like this movie I really don’t blame you, we all have our own thoughts, I’ve met people who actually enjoyed watching “Gods of Egypt.” You know the movie featuring a bunch of Egyptians played by non-Egyptian actors? Yeah, that one. For me, this movie was boring, I had no interest while watching the movie, I just wanted to leave the auditorium. If you like the movie, that’s fine, but that just means we don’t have the same tastes when it comes to film. I’m gonna give “Logan Lucky” a 4/10. Thanks for reading this review, pretty soon I’m gonna go see “The Glass Castle” and review it for you all, and also stay tuned for my series of Tom Cruise movie reviews, I’ll be reviewing three movies in this category, so stay tuned for those! Also, I want to know, what is a movie that you think is bad that everyone else thinks is good? For me, that’s this movie. OR what is a movie that you think is good that everyone else thinks is bad? For me, that’s “Spider-Man 3.” Leave your thoughts in the comments! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
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