BEFORE: How about this for luck, I've been a bit down-in-the-dumps over not really having an appropriate film for Memorial Day, despite a fair number of war-based films on my list - "Dunkirk", "Darkest Hour", "Churchill" - and I got rid of all my Iraq/Afghanistan/Benghazi films in January. "Last Flag Flying" could have worked if I hadn't already watched it, same goes for "Flyboys". I just couldn't quite bend the chain to my will, so I finally just had to shrug and pledge to do better on July 4 and/or Veterans' Day.
The closest I could come was to schedule "Defiance", a concentration-camp film starring Daniel Craig, for this weekend - but then in order to move "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" to October, I had to flip around a large part of the list that included "Defiance", so that's been re-scheduled for early June.
But this other film with Daniel Craig stayed in place, and now I realize this film is set at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, home of the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race, which, as luck would have it, takes place on Memorial Day weekend. I must have known that, somehow, on some deep subconscious level, right? Like I used to tape NASCAR on the weekends for years, when I was tracking animated commercials during sports events, the annual race schedule must be bouncing around in the back of my brain or something. Anyway, now I've got a very timely film to kick off Memorial Day weekend, and I could also land myself some kind of sponsorship now...
Katie Holmes carries over from "The Gift", and so does one other actress. Cate Blanchett will be back VERY soon, and Keanu Reeves will be back in about a week. I had to make some tough decisions here, too many paths to follow when I have so many prolific stars in each film...
THE PLOT: Two brothers attempt to pull off a heist during a NASCAR race in North Carolina.
AFTER: Boy, I think I really needed a film like this, after a week of films that I rated with mostly 4's and 5's, and then before that there was "Movie 43"... It's easy to forget what a GOOD movie feels like when you watch so many fair-to-middling ones. Movies are supposed to be FUN, and this one's a lot of fun. Whatever else "Lucky You" and "Hanna" were, and they were fine films, they sort of forgot to be FUN. Even the heist movies I've been watching lately haven't been that much fun, "Destroyer" and "The Vault" took themselves WAY too seriously. "Shimmer Lake" sort of bordered on being madcap, but took a little too much delight in killing off its characters, plus it was just a bit too proud of its own backwards structure. And then "The Mule" and "White Boy Rick" just wanted to be about the crimes portrayed in a very matter-of-fact way, where's the fun-loving spirit?
OK, back in "The Place Beyond the Pines", when Ryan Gosling's character robbed a bank for the first time, then got on his motorcycle, rode it down the street a ways and then up a ramp and into a waiting truck, totally ditching the cops, who then couldn't figure out how the motorcycle they were looking for completely disappeared - the first time you see that you think, "Damn, what fun! And what a GREAT idea! Who the hell thought of THAT?" Well, nearly all of "Logan Lucky" has that same spirit to it. Maybe I should have known, this was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who made the "Ocean's Eleven" reboot and its two sequels, and there's that same feeling of crazy inventiveness where 11, 12 or 13 guys came together, with different criminal backgrounds and specialties, to pull off a (nearly) impossible heist.
This time the target is not a casino, it's a large NASCAR racetrack, where the money is "dumped" via pneumatic tubes liked they used to use to send messages in giant office buildings, or when they started up drive-thru banks in the 1970's. If you were in the lane furthest from the bank, you'd put your money in a little plastic capsule along with a deposit slip, then the tube would take the capsule under the ground and air pressure would deliver it to the teller, and you'd hope that your cash would then make it into your account. See, back in the 1970's there was a gas shortage ("energy crisis") and people didn't want to waste gas starting their cars again after parking to walk into the bank - somebody figured out it took less gas to KEEP the car running, plus turning the car off and parking it in the hot sun would lessen the effects of air conditioning, and then it would take even more energy to get the car cooled off again, so they re-designed banks and fast-food restaurants to all have drive-thru windows so nobody would ever have to park their car and get out of it again. It was well-intentioned but it didn't really work.
A construction worker learns about the tubes under the racetrack that transport the money to a holding area, and while he's down there filling in some sinkholes, he puts together a plan to divert the money into trash bags - because with all the trash bags leaving the well-attended track on race day, who's going to notice a few more? He plans the heist with his dour veteran brother (who happens to be a veteran who lost his hand in Iraq) and they realize they need the help of an explosives expert, Joe Bang, who happens to be in prison. So the heist film also becomes a prison-break film, and then they've got to make a plan to get the guy back IN to prison after the heist, which seems a bit unusual at first, but this makes sense, right? If they busted him out right before the heist, not only would it be extremely obvious WHO took part in the heist, but the authorities would be after him for TWO reasons. However, if it looks like he never left the prison, then he's also got the perfect alibi.
So the plan is for one brother to get in some minor trouble and sent to the same jail as Joe Bang, so he can help him escape. So really, there are TWO plans here to get into prison, and one in between to break out. Nobody really notices when one Logan brother goes to jail, because supposedly the family has collectively had so much bad luck that they're "cursed". So Clyde runs his car into/through a convenience store and gets (conveniently) sent to the same prison, the one that they've worked out the supply truck schedules for, and (conveniently) gets a job in the infirmary, which allows Joe Bang to fake an illness and then the two can put their escape plan in action.
I know, the plan here seems very elaborate, and it is, and therefore very unlikely - like how could a couple of rednecks have foreseen every little element of this plan, accounting for every variable both seen and unforeseen. Well, they probably couldn't have, but as the plan comes together, it's so much fun that I found that I didn't mind very much. And then most of the actors are so subdued, so deadpan, that it somehow conversely makes everything around them seem more alive and vibrant, if that makes any sense. The exception to that rule is Daniel Craig, who usually plays the very suave, cool and controlled James Bond, and here he's an excitable, hollerin' Southern man who happens to know a lot about chemistry and explosives.
I don't want to say any more about the twists and turns in the heist or in the over-arching plot, there may even be times when the viewers will be scratching their heads, wondering, "Why is that character doing THAT?" But it does all come together in the end, there's sort of a reason for everything and even when two federal agents start looking into the heist and think they've got it all pieced together, nothing could be further from the truth.
This film made me think of a movie from 1980 called "How to Beat the High Cost of Living", which had three bored Oregon housewives stealing money from a shopping mall, using a similar system of vacuums and trash bags. The film caught my attention as a teen because the heist involved Jane Curtin doing an impromptu strip-tease in front of a crowd as a distraction, and I guess that was one of my horny teen fantasies. TMI?
I'd love to get back to North Carolina someday, my sister lives there and my parents are visiting her right now. I rode through it as a tween on the way to Florida on a family trip, but haven't spent much time there, and if my wife and I ever do a third BBQ crawl, I'd love to see what their 'cue scene is all about.
Bottom line, this film made me glad that I went to the trouble of setting up our PlayStation to access Amazon Prime, which I'd been unable to get working on my computer (damn missing SilverLight plug-in!). Now I've got all of our streaming accounts - Netflix, Hulu, Amazon - in one place and I was able to watch this one today for FREE instead of paying $3.99 on iTunes. It still would have been worth paying for, but I didn't know that going in - now it's an eccentric, delightful film that I didn't have to buy.
Also starring Channing Tatum (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Adam Driver (last seen in "Frances Ha"), Daniel Craig (last seen in "The Invasion"), Riley Keough (last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Dwight Yoakam (last seen in "Bandidas"), Seth MacFarlane (last seen in "Movie 43"), Sebastian Stan (last seen in "Destroyer"), Brian Gleeson (last seen in "Mother!"), Jack Quaid (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), David Denman (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Hilary Swank (also carrying over from "The Gift"), Farrah Mackenzie, Jim O'Heir, Macon Blair (last seen in "Gold"), Charles Halford, with cameos from Jeff Gordon (last heard in "Cars 3"), Darrell Waltrip (ditto), Mike Joy, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, LeAnn Rimes.
RATING: 7 out of 10 colored cockroaches
No comments:
Post a Comment