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Fannish Friday (on time sorta!)
Aug. 31st, 2018 11:52 pmI’m a few weeks behind on Fannish Friday because I’ve been traveling. Still, I’m going to devote this week to one thing: my love for the movie Logan Lucky (2017) (which happens to be what I watched on the plane).
Now, I like this movie’s forerunner, Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of Ocean’s 11. The cinematography is glossy and gorgeous, the music chill, the protagonists witty and charming. One gets a brief glimpse of the main characters’ motives—Danny trying to win back his lost love, Rusty slaking his boredom, Saul completing his one last job—and one wants them to succeed because they’re clever and casinos are sleazy businesses. Still, Ocean’s 11’s pleasant, Prosecco-like fizz dissolves as quickly as the group disperses the end of the film.
Logan Lucky takes the fun of the heist formula and gives it stakes and emotional resonance, which is why I couldn't stop thinking about it once it ended. The cast is much smaller, concentrating on the "cursed" Logan family, which gives it a mythos. Jimmy (Channing Tatum) is a recently-laid off construction worker whose dreams of football stardom were dashed by a leg injury. Jimmy’s a loving, attentive dad, and fears losing time with his daughter Sadie once his ex-wife and her second husband move from West Virginia to North Carolina. (It seems his prior criminal conviction from a failed bank robbery would prevent him from crossing state lines to see Sadie.) He needs cash to pay a lawyer to make sure he can still see her. Jimmy’s brother Clyde (Adam Driver) wound up in juvenile detention for participating in his brother's robbery attempt and later lost most of his arm fighting in Iraq. Clyde’s hobby is tracking down legends of the Logan family curse, which doesn’t seem difficult as most local folks seem quick to remind them of their family’s misfortunes. All of this—their financial woes, their tarnished family reputation, Jimmy’s fear of being separated from Sadie—drive the need for the robbery, for which Jimmy targets the Charlotte Motor Speedway. They’re joined by their sister Mellie, a hairdresser/speed demon who seems to have escaped the Logan family curse, and another trio of ne’er-do-well siblings led by the explosives expert criminal Joe Bang (Daniel Craig).
The heist itself is quite fun, and Soderbergh and the writing team put twists on the Oceans 11 sequence of events to build toward the robbery. While Danny Ocean projects fancy blueprints, Jimmy cobbles together a model of the underground parts of the racetrack using old pizza boxes and toilet paper tubes. While Danny Ocean and his crew construct a replica vault and dazzle their way into the Bellagio with Saul's Eastern European aristocrat act, Joe Bang stages a prison riot to escape for the robbery and cobbles together explosives with gummy bears, bleach pens, and fake salt. Ocean and his gang plan to rob the three Vegas casinos on the night when they’ll have their maximum cash holdings, the Logan's pick a middling day when their robbery might go unnoticed, but then their plans are up-ended and they must rob the racetrack during the biggest race of the year.
Logan Lucky really distinguishes itself from Ocean's 11 in the heart it shows, particularly in the second act. Jimmy races from the raceway robbery to see Sadie perform at a pageant. When she unexpectedly sings "Take Me Home, Country Roads," his favorite song, he seems to have a crisis of conscience about all that he's stolen, which is something the audience never sees the Ocean's cast contend with. The next day, the news reports show a truck with a flatbed full of money abandoned at a convenience store, presumed from the raceway robbery, earning the heist the moniker "Oceans 7-11." The bonds between Jimmy and his siblings—who have been fiercely protective of one another through the whole film—threaten to unravel at this betrayal. This new challenge gives the film its staying power, and makes the dénouement that much sweeter. The film ends with a bit of open-ended tension, which creates opportunities for a sequel. I have mixed feelings about that possibility; while it would be fun to spend more time with the Logans, I would hate to see these characters and their world become a gimmick.
Logan Lucky really distinguishes itself from Ocean's 11 in the heart it shows, particularly in the second act. Jimmy races from the raceway robbery to see Sadie perform at a pageant. When she unexpectedly sings "Take Me Home, Country Roads," his favorite song, he seems to have a crisis of conscience about all that he's stolen, which is something the audience never sees the Ocean's cast contend with. The next day, the news reports show a truck with a flatbed full of money abandoned at a convenience store, presumed from the raceway robbery, earning the heist the moniker "Oceans 7-11." The bonds between Jimmy and his siblings—who have been fiercely protective of one another through the whole film—threaten to unravel at this betrayal. This new challenge gives the film its staying power, and makes the dénouement that much sweeter. The film ends with a bit of open-ended tension, which creates opportunities for a sequel. I have mixed feelings about that possibility; while it would be fun to spend more time with the Logans, I would hate to see these characters and their world become a gimmick.
