Imagine, if you will, a redneck Ocean's Eleven. That would be the elevator pitch for Logan Lucky, the latest film directed by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Magic Mike, Haywire) from a screenplay by first-time writer, Rebecca Blunt.
Jimmy Logan is let go from his job. Frustrated, he sees a way to improve his lot: by robbing the vault of one of the biggest NASCAR events of the year. Aided by his one-armed veteran bartender brother Clyde and a consummate safecracker who is currently behind bars, Jimmy hatches a plan to break the bank.
It's a film brimful of charm and wit. Channing Tatum makes for an affable, likeable presence as Jimmy. You get behind him wanting to make a better life for himself and you want him to get away with this harebrained scheme. Providing a nice counterbalance, Adam Driver is grounded and realistic (pessimistic?) as the superstitious Clyde, obsessed with the idea of 'the Logan curse'. Daniel Craig plays Joe, the safecracker, with a mixture of eccentricity and vigour; if you're only used to him being Bond, this will be a very different performance!
Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson provide lunkheaded comic relief as Joe's dimwatt brothers Fish and Sam. There's also a fantastically funny supporting turn by Dwight Yoakam as Warden Burns, desperately trying to stop any outside interference at the prison with a constant refrain of 'we don't have [insert catastrophe] here'. The only bit of casting that doesn't work for me is an unrecognisable Seth MacFarlane as a strikingly unfunny douchebag energy-drink merchant.
But this isn't just a Boys' Own adventure: there are lovely turns by Riley Keogh as Jimmy and Clyde's sister Mellie (a hairdresser who knows a thing or two about cars); Katie Holmes, who plays Jimmy's ex-wife Bobbie Jo; Katherine Waterston as Sylvia, a local nurse who gets involved with Jimmy; Farrah Mackenzie who plays Jimmy and Bobbie Jo's beauty-pageant-obsessed daughter Sadie (who provides an unexpectedly poignant version of John Denver's 'Take Me Home, Country Roads') and Hilary Swank as Special Agent Sarah Grayson, assigned to investigate how the heist was done.
The actual heist itself is high octane and thrilling- and skilfully shot. The film is also funny. Like, really funny. But clever funny. There's a great bit during the heist where Joe painstakingly explains exactly how the explosive is going to work (including equations). Similarly, a prison hostage situation escalates over the availability of George R.R. Martin's books. There is some comedy mined from Southern stereotypes but it's few and far between.
I saw this on a night when I needed a bit of escapism. I wanted something to make me laugh and chill me out. Logan Lucky delivered that perfectly. A lot of fun.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Tez
Let's be fair, the Harry Potter movie franchise is an absolute juggernaut. Eight movies, all expertly written, directed and acted. So the production team are obviously hoping that lightning is going to strike twice with the first of five films in the Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them franchise.
Written by J.K. Rowling, produced by David Heyman and directed by David Yates (who directed the last four Harry Potter films), Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them sees magizoologist Newt Scamander- author of the titular Hogwarts set text- in New York in 1926, having to hunt down a few of his errant creatures that escape whilst negotiating the hostility of a No-Maj (muggle/non-magical) society and the machinations of a very dangerous dark wizard: Gellert Grindlewald.
Eddie Redmayne exudes a very lovely eccentric edge as Newt. If he wasn't already an Oscar-winning actor with a major franchise ahead of him, I'd suggest he submits this to the Doctor Who casting office in case they need to start looking for Peter Capaldi's replacement. There is a very Doctor-ish feel to Newt- slightly out of step with other humans, very focused on his own little world and with a dimensionally transcendental piece of apparatus (it's no exaggeration to say that Newt's suitcase is bigger on the inside).
Katherine Waterston is similarly strong as demoted Auror Tina Goldstein who arrests Newt for being an unregistered wizard and then gets drawn in to his quest to reclaim his missing creatures. Threatening to steal the show, however, are Alison Sudol as Tina's mindreading and flirty sister Queenie and Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski, a No-Maj cannery worker and aspiring baker who gets his suitcase swapped with Newt's and also gets drawn into a world he never knew existed.
The rest of the cast are pretty good too: Samantha Morton is chilling as the dead-eyed fanatic Mary Lou Barebone, leader of the Second Salemers who call for wizards and witches to be destroyed. Ezra Miller is similarly good as her adopted son Credence, a young man with more than a few secrets of his own. It's odd to see an actor with the profile and presence of Jon Voight in a film like this, but he only has a glorified cameo as a newspaper magnate so doesn't bother unduly. The only dud note is Colin Farrell, who I just can't take seriously, especially as he's supposed to be the Head of Magical Security at MACUSA (the Magical Congress of the United States of America).
Visually, as you can imagine, the film is just stunning. Everything from the steam liner that Newt disembarks from at the very beginning to the sweeping grandeur of the MACUSA headquarters and the world within Newt's suitcase is just sublime. A quick trip to a magical speakeasy also provides scale but it's also in the smaller scenes- Queenie magically making a strudel, for instance- where the production design and the visual effects shine. The magical beasts, too, are similarly wonderful.
This is a 12A so it's not all cutesy- there's some quite dark stuff within there, not least a murderous force created by a magical being suppressing their magical ability. There's child abuse, lost loves, a rather unpleasant near-death experience for one of the main characters and a resolutely downbeat moment in the rain (which, I don't mind admitting, I teared up to). There are glimmers of hope towards the end but you don't half go through the wringer to get there.
This might sound like a bit of an odd complaint to have about a film called Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them... but I really could have done with there being more beasts. There are some wonderful set-pieces involving Newt trying to catch a Niffler (a kind of avaricious platypus, attracted to shiny things) and also trying to catch an escaped erupment (a large and horny cross between a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros) in Central Park. But the film almost treats these as side-shows, instead focusing on the political situation with the No-Majs versus MACUSA and the ever-growing threat of Grindlewald. I don't know whether they felt it would just be a series of set-pieces strung together with a flimsy plot if it was just Newt turning up trying to find things- nothing more than a big-screen version of Pokemon Go, perhaps?- and perhaps it might not sustain five films.
This slight niggle aside, I found Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them to be a very strong start to the franchise and I look forward to seeing more.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Tez
