“You know, I don’t care if he’s great. I just hope that he’s lucky.” As the last line of one of Woody Allen’s best offerings of the early 00s, Match Point, the rumination on whether or not a person needs to be “great”–or, rather, talented–in life in order to succeed is also a large–if not the primary–theme of Logan Lucky, the film that coerced Steven Soderbergh to come out of his faux retirement.
Like the Kennedys before them, it seems as though the Logan family, comprised of Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) and Mellie Logan (Riley Keough), has had their share of bad luck in the past–though Mellie less than the others. Clyde, the most superstitious of all about the curse that has plagued the Logan family for generations, automatically brings it up to Jimmy after he shows up to Duck Tape, the bar where Clyde works, to tell him he’s just been fired from the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Immediately going into his spiel, Clyde reminds, “There’s a pattern. Pappaw’s diamond, Uncle Stickley’s electrocution, Mommy gets sick after Daddy’s settlement, the roof collapse–come on, Jimmy. You blow your knee out. And a roadside mine takes my arm as I was transpo-ing out. I was almost at the airport.” Referring to his time served in the military during Gulf War II, Jimmy can’t help but silently admit that Clyde has a point as he one-handedly pours drinks with a prosthetic arm.
And with his ex-wife, Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes), suddenly announcing her and her husband’s plan to move even farther away to Lynchburg, Virginia with his daughter, Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie), Jimmy knows he’s got to find a way to get a hold of some money to empower himself, and quickly. Ironically in luck, a heist opportunity has presented itself to Jimmy, who happens to learn that the means through which the speedway moves its money is through a a pneumatic tube system. Aware of the ins and outs of the speedway from his time working on its construction, Jimmy knows exactly where the money is transported to, and decides it’s time to use this formerly useless knowledge for his own gain.
With the reluctant help of his brother after declaring “cauliflower” (a code word they used for their mischief and robberies as youths), the Logans now just need the help of an explosives man, one Joe Bang (Daniel Craig). The only issue is, he’s still serving time in prison for his last little explosion. The Logans have that–and seemingly every other angle–covered though, with Clyde committing his own misdemeanor so as to get ninety days in the same prison as Joe. With all the wheels in motion, a classic bout of Logan “luckiness” occurs when the date they had planned to rob the speedway gets bumped up after Jimmy just so happens to run into his boss, Cal (Jim O’Heir, a.k.a. Jerry from Parks and Recreation), who informs him the construction crew is finishing up early on the job. This means not only that their window of opportunity is closing, but also that they’re going to have to rob the track on the most important date of the year: the Coca-Cola 600 race. This also presents a problem with Joe’s brothers, Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson), who have been enlisted to “protect his interests” in the heist, but require a “moral reason” to commit any robbery. Before, the Logan brothers had offered up the fact that on the original intended date of the job, the Grocery Castle would be sponsoring the event and that, according to the brothers, the assistant manager got “handsy” with Mellie after she was promoted. This was valid enough for Sam and Fish. But now, as they say, “We needed a moral reason to pull this job with you now. We was fine with you wantin’ to get back at that store for messin’ with your hot sister. Yeah. But you did a whole 360 on everything when you moved up the date. And NASCAR ain’t done nothin’ to nobody. NASCAR’s a beautiful thing. NASCAR’s like America! So it’s like you’re makin’ us hurt America.” With the pressure and intensity running high at every level of the operation–including the fact that Jimmy has to make it to his daughter’s beauty pageant on time–the tensions between all involved reach a crescendo when, once again, Sam and Fish are the ones to complain and goad, accusing certain things of going wrong on account of getting involved with a family as notoriously unlucky as the Logans. They even go for Clyde’s jugular after his arm accidentally gets sucked up by the machine intended for the money by rehashing, “[Jimmy] knows you gettin’ your arm blowed off in Iraq was all his fault. Everybody knows you never would’ve gone and joined up to fight if your big brother wasn’t a football star. He was gonna be hot shit. He was gonna play for the NFL. And nobody around here ever done anythin’ like that. You were gonna be just another white trash coal miner. The Logan family curse.”
It’s at this point that screenwriter Rebecca Blunt perhaps subtly brings into the equation the following question: how much of our luck is real versus imagined? How much do we let the concept of bad luck feed off of itself by giving it credence? It seems Jimmy refuses to accept the so-called “Logan family curse” any longer, powering through the rest of the robbery with a curveball to his master plan that he failed to tell anyone else for their own safety–as well as for the assured success of not getting caught. However, when the FBI is enlisted to investigate the case, with Sarah Grayson (Hilary Swank, somewhat out of place among the rest of the cast) heading up the probe, Jimmy puts all the good luck he has left to the test. Fortunately for the Logans, circumstances conspire to make everyone–except Grayson, that is–lose interest in the case after six months. But the Logans wouldn’t be the Logans if they got off that luckily. Hence, an ending that could easily lead to a sequel opportunity. But regardless of whether that happens or not, the tongue-in-cheekly titled Logan Lucky is a more action movie-oriented version of Match Point, with slightly less frail and morally reprehensible characters subject to the whims of Lady Luck. Whose lack of mercy we all often find ourselves tangoing with.
