Well…I should say upfront, this isn’t really my kind of movie. I KNOW that I’m missing the point here, but I really do like plots that make sense!
Here’s the setup for Logan Lucky: A man loses his job for some bogus “insurance” reason. His ex-wife plans to move away, taking his daughter with her; without a job he has no money to fight this in court. What doesn’t make sense is why he goes straight to “see you in court” since they appear to get along just fine. In order to obtain money, he hatches a plan to rob a bank. Except it’s not a bank, it’s the nearby NASCAR stadium.
It’s an odd, illogical setup for a film that can’t quite decide what it is. Perhaps it’s enough to say it’s a Steven Soderbergh movie, and essentially what you’d expect. A mismatched group of oddballs get together for a get-rich-quick heist and the plan goes off with a hitch, and then another hitch. And so on.
The setup takes too long, I completely missed why the Brothers Weird had to be recruited and I did think the “Southern hick” stereotypes were a bit overdone. But once the great scheme goes into action the movie does get fun. While preposterous, the plan for getting Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) out of jail is daftly ingenious. When things start to go wrong – we have been primed to expect this by all the talk of the Logan family “curse” – each hitch is hilarious in its own way, and one or two are laugh-out-loud funny.
But the film never quite grabbed me. Most of the characters are two dimensional and the plot device with the daughter is a too-transparent attempt to tug the heartstrings. The ending, while satisfying, lays the groundwork for a sequel but I wasn’t left wanting more.