Try to imagine as many stereotypes of the southern U.S. as possible. Now add a bank robbery involving cockroaches, gummy bears, and a prosthetic arm. All of this adds up to a great day at the movies. This weekend I saw Logan Lucky and I went because the trailers made it look like a silly/stupid crime film that I thought would be a lot of fun. I was not disappointed. A lot of the stupid makes a lot of sense and most importantly, it’s funny as hell. On top of the usual, almost predictable kind of humour you might expect to see in a film like this, there were definitely some unexpected gems in Logan Lucky that had the audience roaring with laughter.
All of the characters are caricatures but the film seems to be very aware of this. One of the underlying themes of Logan Lucky is that you can get farther if people think you are dumber than you actually are, and I believe the film as a whole does just that. Some of the characters get away with quite a lot more than you would expect during the robbery, all because they are good at pretending to be dumber than they are (although in some cases, they really are that stupid). The film seems to get away with this too by displaying itself as a stupid film, yet in the end credits it boasts that no one in the making of the movie was robbed except the audience. Since we paid to take a few hours out of our day to see this film, it had creatively and successfully robbed us of our time and money – although I certainly did not feel robbed by this entertaining experience.
The best way to sum up the plot of this film is with the line that gets repeated (and written) probably the most often: Shit Happens. Just about everything that goes wrong at any time in the film could be attributed to this. One thing that most definitely did not go wrong was Joe Bang, played by Daniel Craig. I will be the first to admit that I am not normally a fan of Daniel Craig; I don’t know that I have ever looked forward to seeing him in a film. Until now, that is. I honestly never thought Craig could be funny but Joe Bang was hilarious and he was easily my favourite character in the entire film.
I’ll admit, as the film was winding down at the end I was starting to get worried that the story was starting to drag on. I felt that we had already passed a point that would have made a good ending and that everything else was unnecessary and watered down by comparison. But, of course, the film was just pretending to be dumb. There was a surprising turn of events – a little bit of a twist ending, if you will – that pulled everything together to bring about a much more satisfying ending. I would definitely recommend Logan Lucky if you’re looking for a fun film to watch on the weekend. But be warned, you might get John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” stuck in your head afterwards.
