Steven Soderbergh‘s “anti-glam Ocean’s 11” looks, to put it simply, like a blast. Based on the first footage from Logan Lucky, which arrived over the weekend, Daniel Craig‘s performance alone as Joe Bang may be worth the price of admission. We haven’t seen Craig quite like this before, and the same can be said for the rest of the stellar cast in Soderbergh’s blessed return to filmmaking.
Below, watch the Logan Lucky trailer.
Before the biggest NASCAR race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600, the Logan family – Jimmy (Channing Tatum), Clyde (Adam Driver) and Mellie Logan (Riley Keough) – plan on pulling off a heist at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. With the help of Joe Bang, an in-car-cer-ated explosives expert, luck may go their way. Logan Lucky, which is written by Rebecca Blunt, co-stars Katherine Waterston, Dwight Yoakam, Seth MacFarlane, Macon Blair, Hilary Swank, Sebastian Stan, and Katie Holmes.
After watching this trailer, it’s no wonder Soderbergh couldn’t (and didn’t) want to imagine anyone else directing this story. With quite a set of characters and the distinct backdrop for a heist movie, Logan Lucky sounds and looks like the kind of entertainment we want to see in the summertime. The trailer does call to mind the Ocean’s trilogy and The Informant, but Logan Lucky comes across as more of a distant cousin to those movies. A smidge familiar, but something different from Soderbergh, a director whose range never ceases to impress.
He’s called his new comedy a stripped down and scrappy version of an Ocean‘s movie:
On the most obvious level, it’s the complete inversion of an Ocean’s movie. It’s an anti-glam version of an Ocean’s movie. Nobody dresses nice. Nobody has nice stuff. They have no money. They have no technology. It’s all rubber band technology, and that’s what I thought was fun about it. It seemed familiar to me, but different enough. The landscape, the characters, and the canvass were the complete opposite of an Ocean’s film. What was weird is that I was working as a producer on Ocean’s Eight while we were shooting Logan, and it was kind of head-spinning. That’s like a proper Ocean’s film. This is a version of an Ocean’s movie that’s up on cement blocks in your front yard.
When Soderbergh is directing fun material, we usually end up with some wonderfully playful spectacle. Whether we’re talking Out of Sight, the Ocean’s 11 movies, The Informant, or Haywire, Soderbergh knows how to provide a great time in the theater. Logan Lucky doesn’t look like an exception.
Doesn’t it feel nice to have a new Soderbergh film to look forward to again?
Logan Lucky opens in theaters August 18.
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