Logan Lucky 2017 * * 1/2 Stars

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year: 2017
Rated PG-13
Rating: * * 1/2 Stars
Cast: Channing Tatum, Seth MacFarlane, Adam Driver

Remember when a great actress gave a bad performance? I do. It was in 2013's Elysium with Jodie Foster projecting acting 101 as a humanoid, secretary of defense. In Logan Lucky (my latest review), Hilary Swank does the same thing. The multiple Oscar winner delivers her lines in a robotic manner playing Special Agent Sarah Grayson. Now was her screen time in "Lucky's" last twenty minutes completely necessary? I'm thinking no.

Anyway, Logan Lucky's story involves two brothers (played by Channing Tatum as Jimmy Logan and Adam Driver as Clyde Logan) attempting to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Tatum's character has a limp in his leg and Driver's character has one arm. They are almost broke, they are down on their luck, and they really need the money. Tatum and Driver on a quest to secure many garbage bags full of dough, are surrounding by a host of troupers. You have an unrecognizable Daniel Craig (safecracker), an unrecognizable Seth McFarlane (British businessman), an underdeveloped Katherine Waterson (love interest), and a goofy Dwight Yoakam (prison Warden). Everyone sort of fades in and out of "Lucky" making it the equivalent of a holed, cinematic blueprint.

Steven Soderbergh is the director of Logan Lucky and well, he can still do pretty much anything. His Out of Sight is different than his Solaris. His Traffic is dissimilar from his Full Frontal. Finally, his Erin Brockovich is much more disparate from his 1999 picture, The Limey.

On a different note, Steven is also a director who hasn't made a film in four and a half years. Supposedly, Side Effects was gonna be his swan song. Now in present day, he comes back with "Lucky" which for all things southern, is a drawled crime caper. Yeah it all feels too little, too late.

Punch-drunk on the success of his Ocean's Trilogy, Soderbergh shoots "Lucky" in the same vein as his Magic Mike. You can spot similar degrees of sliding camerawork and relaxed story-boarding. He then projects Logan Lucky as an Ocean's Eleven for the hick nation. Jotting between the settings of North Carolina and West Virginia, "Lucky" is like a less complex and certainly less drawn-out version of "Eleven".

Logan Lucky's only hook mind you, is that it trades George Clooney and Brad Pitt for the middle class or the should I say, the rural working class. You get to see (and hear) toilet seat horseshoes, John Denver tunes, bobbing for pig's feet, and decorated cockroaches. At the same time, you leave "Lucky" wondering why it was even made or better yet, why Steven Soderbergh came out of retirement to make it. Heck, what was the point of it all really?

Now I'm not saying Logan Lucky is a bad film because while watching it, I realized that Soderbergh hasn't lost his touch. His direction is streamlined and assured. Added to that, his actors for the most part, deliver and he keeps the proceedings moving with a nifty, breezy soundtrack (courtesy of mainstay David Holmes). In the end though, it just feels like his "Lucky" is a design for a flick as opposed to an actual feature. I suppose that's why things are left open for a Logan Lucky sequel. Based on "Lucky's" mediocre, opening weekend at the box office ($8 million), I just don't think that's gonna happen. My rating: 2 and a half stars.

Written by Jesse Burleson