Logan Lucky

LOGAN LUCKY (Steven Soderbergh, 2017)

LOGAN LUCKY is an oxymoron of a title that describes a West Virginia family for whom things seem to go south every time it looks like they’ve caught a break. Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) was on the path to a professional football career until an injury ended that possibility. Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) served in Iraq without incident, only to lose his left hand and part of the forearm in an explosion as he was on his way out of the country at the end of his tour. Their sister Mellie (Riley Keough) doesn’t put as much stock in the so-called curse, but Clyde more than makes up for her skepticism as he recounts family history that provides evidence for its reality.

When Jimmy loses a construction job at the Charlotte Motor Speedway through no fault of his own, he decides to apply the knowledge he gained there to improve his lot by illegal means. Jimmy concocts a scheme to steal the money the racetrack brings in from concession sales and convinces his brother and sister to assist. They know an explosives expert with the perfect skillset, except the right man for the job, the appropriately named Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), is in prison. Jimmy has an elaborate plan in mind for breaking him out and getting him back behind bars without notice, but he needs to add Joe’s dimwit brothers Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson) to the crew to get Joe on board. As thoroughly as Jimmy has prepared, everything becomes riskier when they need to execute the heist earlier than intended.

Director Steven Soderbergh ends his short-lived retirement from filmmaking with a hillbilly variation on his OCEAN’S trilogy. Rebecca Blunt, a first-time screenwriter suspected of being a Soderbergh or his wife’s pseudonym, accounts for all of the questions that might arise in LOGAN LUCKY’s unlikely and intricately plotted robbery. The wide frame and Soderbergh’s open compositions provide room to appreciate how big of an undertaking the heist is and the teamwork necessary to pull it off. The implementation of Jimmy’s plan delivers pleasure because of its finely tooled nature. Sure, this brazen theft is improbable, but the degree to which it has been thought out highlights the structural beauty.

While LOGAN LUCKY hits all the right spots as a heist movie, it’s equally adept as a comedy. The relaxed scenes unwind with amusement at the situations that develop in unexpected ways. A staged prison riot results in a funny negotiation between the convicts and the exasperated warden played by Dwight Yoakam. Joe Bang’s tricks of the trade provoke skepticism until he explains the chemistry and gets the desired result. Mellie’s verbal undermining of the husband of Jimmy’s ex-wife highlights the difference between knowledge and position as the beautician is better acquainted with cars than the auto dealer. The film delights in tweaking expectations.

It seems like accusations of mockery surface any time a film comedically portrays people from the heartland, but LOGAN LUCKY manifests a great deal of warmth for its characters. They may do ridiculous things or have silly ideas, but the film laughs at the frailties in the human condition, not because it’s gawking at self-proclaimed rednecks. The opening scene with Jimmy and his daughter conveys the great affection between the two as he works on his truck and she hands him the requested tools. This relationship informs everything that transpires in the film and is indicative of the generosity the main characters show one another. The emotional peak is reached at a children’s beauty pageant with the singing of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” a scene that could have been mawkish but instead is quite affecting in getting to the heart of what motivates proud, put-upon people like Jimmy and his family. The hijinks and humor conceal the economic subtext, a familiar subject in Soderbergh’s films, but LOGAN LUCKY makes sure to remind that these ornery people are trying to exploit an opportunity just like those who profit off of them.

Grade: A-

It Comes at Night

IT COMES AT NIGHT (Trey Edward Shults, 2017)

A contagious disease has forced those who have survived so far to hole up in their homes, preferably far removed from the rest of society in IT COMES AT NIGHT. The family led by Paul (Joel Edgerton) and Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) has managed to make do in the country, but when her father (David Pendleton) catches the illness, they know they must euthanize him if the rest are to live. It’s a difficult thing for their seventeen-year-old son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) to help with. Still, what must be done must be done.

One night they find that a man has broken into their home. Will (Christopher Abbott) claims that he thought the place was abandoned and is seeking water for his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their little boy Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner). Paul roughs up Will and considers killing him. Eventually he agrees that it may be safer to retrieve Will’s family and their supplies and have them move in as long as they agree to the strict rules of the house.

Writer-director Trey Edward Shults treated the searing family drama of his debut KRISHA like a horror movie. With IT COMES AT NIGHT he’s made a horror film featuring two families. While his latest may have more surface commonalities with genre films, both films study the dynamics in a closed system when tensions run high. In IT COMES AT NIGHT the stakes are elevated to matters of life and death rather than feelings and relationships. Of course, the latter can feel like the former among relatives.

In spite of its narrative and scenic asceticism, IT COMES AT NIGHT generates a fair amount of uneasiness. Shults doesn’t provide many details about the doomsday scenario the characters exist in, but he keeps the audience keenly aware that the smallest break from protocol could have fatal results. The suffocation is felt as the camera slowly wanders down a dark passage in the house and into a heavily wooded area. Shults understands that living in persistent dread is perhaps worse than terrible things popping out at you on occasion.

Although the spareness of IT COMES AT NIGHT is undeniably effective, it reaches a limit where the lack of detail becomes more frustrating than rewarding. The film doesn’t need a news report to fill in a lot of backstory about how things have devolved to current conditions, but it would help to have a better sense of the immediate threats and how the characters might keep the most pernicious one--the disease--at bay. If Shults is commenting on the insular and potentially damaging nature of families, then the film needs a stronger point of view. It’s aligned with Travis, who is at an age when, under normal conditions, he would be able to start establishing an identity separate from his parents. That can’t really happen when it’s everyone or every unit for themselves. Travis is exhibiting signs that he is developing different opinions, but IT COMES AT NIGHT doesn’t develop this angle enough for it to be fruitful.

Keeping everything cloaked in generality grants assigning all sort of meaning to what little action there is, yet the sinking feeling in IT COMES AT NIGHT is that the mystery amounts to less than the scraps examined for clarity.

Grade: C+