Logan Lucky (****1/2)

Steven Soderbergh's return from "retirement" has proven that the auteur filmmaker still has it in him. In fact this may be his most entertaining, funny, and skillfully-crafted movies in his arsenal. It's a heist-story about two brothers who plan to break into a bank vault below the Charlotte Motor Speedway. To complete the task, they require a getaway car, an inmate at the local prison, and a whole lot of guts. Boy was this a cooky ride. Think Coen Brothers crossed with, well, Ocean's 11.

The story focuses around one of the brothers, Jimmy (Channing Tatum) as he is laid off from a construction gig below the speedway. Their job was to fill an ever-flowing supply of sinkholes on the field, and Jimmy knows the tunnels inside and out. He is fired due to a limp he has trouble hiding, a trait his boss describes as a "pre-existing condition." On the other side of town is his bartending brother, Clyde (Adam Driver), an Iraq vet who lost and arm and moves about the town quietly but with purpose. When Jimmy proposes his bafflingly complex plot to steal a couple million dollars, Clyde examines the details closely.

The movie is one big con, a build up to the actual robbery as we see this crack team develop their foolproof plans to get the money. It is a heist that will be done in broad daylight during the Speedway's busiest race of the year. Cashiers all over the field deposit their cash tills in plastic tubing that is sucked underground and into a centralized vault. It's this vault that the men will gain access to. They recruit an absolutely bonkers Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, it's an inspired, unexpected role), a demolitions expert who is due to be released from prison within the year. Wouldn't you know it, Jimmy proposes to sneak him out of prison (during lunch time), assist with the heist, and have him back without the warden suspecting a thing. The plan they devise is hilarious and at times genius.

I really enjoyed the writing above all in this movie. Soderbergh has a reputation for making films that are perhaps overweighted and "serious." This is a laugh-out loud riot with jokes flying left and right. All of his distinctive directorial marks are there, but this is a film first and foremost that is here to entertain. What a brilliant idea! We even get introduced to an FBI agent near the film's last third (Hilary Swank) who has all the workings of a whip smart woman who will crack the case, but she is limited by time, water-tight alibis, and a growing frustration in lack of leads. Swank's character is not unwelcome in the movie, though her story does drag the film into a longer time bracket than we might expect. I think the only issue is her lack of development, lack of motivation, and lack of closure...

This might not be the sort of movie critics will rave for (although they actually seem to like this movie quite a bit). In such a drab year for movies with little to look forward to, this is a gem of a movie that has almost everything going for it. Tatum continues to prove his comic chops, and even paired against someone as strange as Adam Driver, they create a believable and genuine connection that carries the story and makes it that much more special, and LOGAN LUCKY is surely something special.