Logan Lucky

Stars: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Jack Quaid, Brian Gleeson, Hilary Swank, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Seth MacFarlane, Dwight Yoakam, Sebastian Stan

Director: Steven Soderbergh

You can tell from such character names as Max Chilblain and Joe Bang that director Soderbergh intends none of this heist movie to be taken seriously. Perhaps it would have been better if he had, as none of it (though it comes at you fast and fairly furious), is, apart from a couple of isolated moments, at all funny.

Fired from his blue-collar job because of his limp, war veteran Logan (Tatum) enlists his one-armed brother (Driver, who spends most of his time staring into space) and two demented country boys (Quaid, son of Dennis, and Gleeson, son of Brendan) in a scheme to nip across the border from West Virginia to North Carolina and swipe the takings at a Nascar racetrack.

To mastermind the operation, they intend to smuggle master robber Bang (Craig) out of prison, get the money through a series of delivery tubes, and put the con back again before anyone's the wiser. A lot of bucks for your Bang, you might say.

Craig enjoys himself scandalously with an outrageous Virginny accent, completely sidelining a charisma-free Tatum who, perhaps weighed down by his duties as producer, displays none of magnetism evident in the title role of the same director's Magic Mike.

The soundtrack, often just a jumble of noise, is much too loud, sometimes distracting your attention from what's going on, while the plot, or as much of it as one can follow, is just full of holes.

David Quinlan

USA 2017. UK Distributor: Studio Canal . Technicolor.
113 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 1.

Review date: 13 Jan 2018

DVD review