Logan Lucky

I know that everyone else loves him but it took me forever to appreciate what the Steven Sodomy was trying to bring to the big screen. I used to call him Sodomy because that’s what it felt like he was doing to me every time I paid money to see one of his pretentious films. His 90’s flick The Limey was nothing but a high school course on philosophy put to film and Traffic felt as though he was trying to recreate one of those awful D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids off Drugs speeches he heard while growing up in the Ronald Raegan era. I seriously almost walked out of the theater when I saw the word traffic pull up in the lower left hand corner of the screen in the film’s opening shot. I mean, can you suck your own d&*^ just a little harder dude?!?! And yes, if you’re counting, that’s two reviews in a row where I’ve quoted someone from this ridiculous administration; and I plan to continue doing so until the Russians hack my computer and make me fight the modern day Drago for my freedom.

But I eventually began to recognize the fact that he was simply trying to bring art back to filmmaking. I don’t always agree with his approach and only about half of his films are any good but I do give him credit for trying. He decided to briefly retire so that he could go sculpt in his dungeon or whatever but once he got tired of sucking the porcelain d&*^ of his own statue (ok, I promise I’ll stop), he decided to make his return to filmmaking by giving us Hillbilly Oceans 11; or as they call it in the film, Oceans 7-11.

Logan Lucky is about this down on their luck family in West Virginia who can’t ever seem to get ahead no matter what they have going for them. The film’s two main stars have noticeable marks of this as Jimmy (Channing Tatum) has a busted knee from a football injury that ended his promising college career and his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) lost half of his arm fighting in the Gulf War and thus rendered him useless in the military. Neither of them seem to be particularly bright but they are geniuses compared to their cohorts, and you’ll see evidence of this as they attempt to pull off this grand heist.

Jimmy is struggling just to make ends meet as he can’t keep a job due to his bum knee and sadly his brother is of no help as he works a dead end job as a bartender in the town’s only bar. Plus it doesn’t help matters that Jimmy has to deal with his temperamental ex-wife and her new rich douchebag husband who have full custody of his daughter, the light of his life. So one day Jimmy gets this brilliant idea to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway, the Mecca of the South. Millions of dollars flow through there on any given weekend and because Jimmy was working construction beneath the stadium to repair the sink holes that had formed, he was somehow able to luck upon a flaw in their security system. So now all he has to do is find a way to break the town’s explosive expert, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) out of jail while he also convincing his two idiot brothers to help him in pulling off the impossible heist.

Now as you can imagine you have to fully immerse yourself in the land of Never Never Land to believe that these hillbillies have the mental faculties to pull this off but to Sodomy’s credit there are quite a few mishaps along the way. Plus, it’s always funny to see hicks stumble and bumble over each other even if you can totally tell that it’s just James Bond and little Han-Solo trying to give their best impression of a southern accent. Sodomy’s artistic approach is on full display as he uses odd camera angles and an almost 70’s approach to storytelling to bring this fun crime film to life and in the process give us ordinary folk some hope in these dark times.

We can use some mindless entertainment from time to time and since George Clooney is 70 years old and just had twins, you may as well recruit Channing Tatum to do just that for us. I rate this film as kind of FRESH and suggest that you pop in.