Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Logan Lucky Blu-ray Movie Review

Heist-Men

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 18, 2017

Steven Soderbergh certainly knows his way around a Heist film. The Oscar-winng director helmed the Oceans trilogy, a trio of films about elaborate robberies featuring star-studded casts. His latest, Logan Lucky, is sort of like a redneck version (or "Hillbilly Heist" as it is called at one point in the film) thereof, taking place not in a fancy Vegas casino but rather in the bowels of a NASCAR raceway and featuring a hodgepodge of everyday characters, like an unemployed and divorced father of one, a maimed combat veteran, and an incarcerated safe cracker. It's a contagiously fun film filled with great performances (including Channing Tatum, who has certainly turned his career around following a few less-than-stellar outings early on) from an all-star cast. It's subtly witty and plays through an agreeably authentic script. The result is one of the most unique Heist films ever made and one of the best of its kind, period.

Down and out.

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is a divorced father of one whose life revolves around his little girl. He sees her as much as he can, but his wife has moved on with her life, hooking up with a loaded car dealer who plans to move the family across state lines. Jimmy's also just lost his job due to company red tape wrapped around a long-standing limp (a preexisting condition the company wants to wash its hand of). He'd been working a repair job underneath the Charlotte Motor Speedway where he'd become privy to inside information about how the venue's cash funds are transported and stored through a system of underground pipes. He and his brother, a combat veteran named Clyde (Adam Driver) who has lost his left hand and makes ends meet tending bar, hatch a plan to steal the money that's moved under the race grounds during one of the more quiet, less security-intensive weekends leading up to a big race. They enlist the help of their sister Mellie (Riley Keough), an incarcerated safe cracker (Daniel Craig), and his brothers (Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid), hatching a plan to bust him out and bring him back inside before anyone else is any the wiser. But as these things go, plans change, the date is moved up to the weekend of the biggest NASCAR race of the year, and it's going to require precisely timed coordination and a good bit of luck to pull off the job of a lifetime.

This is what makes movies so much fun. Logan Lucky takes one of the oldest plays in the book and places it in the hands of fresh new characters, drops it into a unique setting, and gives it a down-home and very relatable flavor. Whereas the Oceans films were about the glitz and glamour around the heist, Logan Lucky is more about the raw, real world around the heist. While the characters may not be universally relatable -- severely wounded combat vet, divorcee, prisoner -- they're more or less regular people struggling with real problems in tangible, difficult places in their lives. That gives the movie an approachable and agreeable edge that's missing from the Oceans films. This isn't casinos and tuxedos. This is camo and cars. It's infectiously fun. It finds just the right balance of serious narrative advancement and mildly comical undertones. Character development is wonderful, and even if they're not exactly brimming with creativity there's an honest depth to them that helps propel their relationships with one another, a select handful of people around them, and as they manever through the tricky details of the heist itself. Soderbergh keeps the movie infused with freshness, even through its somewhat extended denouement that's the only part of the film that even threatens to drag.

But Soderbergh doesn't just dress up the movie with a different location, new faces, and ball caps. He's created a living, breathing world with characters who are facing their own difficulties and struggling through the pitfalls of life, where it's patently unfair but all they can do is their best to get on by. Unless, of course, they devise a scheme to rip off a NASCAR event. There's a distinct sense of character to the movie, both in the way Soderbergh tells the story and in the way the actors present the story. Gone from the film is a sense of distance, that feeling that it's an entertainment vessel like any of the Oceans films. Logan Lucky is instead an organic, tangible film, shot in a way to make the audience feel like an active member of the crew, not overtly, but subtly to be sure. It's approachable, engaging, and a completely fun time at the movies that absolutely flies by even at two hours in length.

Performances are wonderful across the board. Channing Tatum's career turnaround continues to impress. This might be his most grounded, relatable, believable work. He's right at home underneath his ball cap and playing estranged daddy to a little girl who is the apple of his eye and who is unquestionably her hero, even as her mother has moved along with her life and hooked up with a Ford car dealer who has put them squarely in the lap of luxury. Daniel Craig is wonderful as the more stoic detainee who is equally at home cracking jokes about prison onesies and mixing up an explosive concoction out of sweets and a plastic bag as he is carrying some of the film's more intensive action and dramatic sequences. Adam Driver, who continues his rapid ascension to the top of the list of best actors working today (and anyone who may have missed it absolutely has to check him out in Paterson), delivers another grounded, effortless performance as a combat veteran whose disability is not a liability but rather simply a part of his life. "I'm lucky," he says at one point in the film, and he handles jokes about his prosthetic hand with breezy acceptance and humor. Driver's uncanny ability to bring life to any character benefits the movie perhaps more than any other of its many positive attributes; he's become a must-see in a Hollywood that's degrading in quality around him.

Logan Lucky Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Logan Lucky's Blu-ray delivers a wonderful viewing experience from start to finish. The digitally photographed motion picture presents very cleanly, yielding no significant noise or other source- or encode-specific flaws of note. Textural qualities are wonderful. Everything is sharp as a tack and superbly defined down to the finest clothing fiber, most intimate facial texture, prison interior, or barroom wood; anything and everything finds itself supremely well defined and very clear. Colors are stout and many, bold and pleasing without ever appearing excessively hot even through the bursts of color at the NASCAR race and around the raceway. Every shade enjoys fruitful accuracy and definition. Skin tones are solid and black levels are inky deep and pure. This one's a winner.

Logan Lucky Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Logan Lucky's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack capably, energetically, and clearly carries the film from beginning to end. Sound is wide and often intense, particularly during the NASCAR race in the final act where vigorous engine revs and other sounds of racing scorch through the soundstage, particularly during some of the on-track sequences but even down below when the guys are carrying out their plan as the cars zoom around above. While it would have been the perfect opportunity to further engage the top end with an Atmos or DTS:X soundtrack, the disc features neither, but there's nevertheless a pleasing sense of swirl during the sequence. Heavier action effects, like a small explosion or a prison riot, are smartly positioned and precise. Ambient support, whether light exterior sounds or mild barroom din, gently eases the listener into any of the film's varied locations. Music is wide and detailed with honest surround and subwoofer support. Dialogue is clear and precise with firm front-center positioning and expert prioritization.

Logan Lucky Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Logan Lucky's Blu-ray release contains only a pair of deleted scenes (1080p): Pro/Con (2:45) and Tap Dancing (1:05). A DVD copy of the film and a UV/iTunes digital copy code are included with purchase.

Logan Lucky Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Logan Lucky is a hugely enjoyable film built on a modestly styled heist plot that's made fresh with a fun setting, good characters, strong direction, and wonderful performances. Universal's Blu-ray is disappointingly short on supplemental content but video and audio deliver a flawless A/V presentation. Highly recommended.