Logan Lucky

Playing out almost as a less professional, backwater 'Ocean's Eleven (2001)' with simple-minded folk trying to pull off a no-frills yet fairly daring heist under the radar to support themselves the only way they know how (since most of them are disabled in some way), 'Logan Lucky' is a story mostly told without any embellishments and a real earthy quality that runs opposite to the slick trend usually seen in con-capers of the kind. It's entertaining until the third act screeches to a halt and the picture runs along for far too long after the main event has been and gone. The flick instead chooses to take its time winding-down until it tries to inject some unnecessary intelligence in a forced revelation that does nothing other than hurt the piece. Soderbergh tends to get distracted by peripheral elements that take too much screen-time with too little impact to be relevant. The motivations for all the characters are paper thin, too, and they're never fully realised so it all ends up feeling a little pointless. It is consistently fun, though, and never as predictable as it threatens to be, but it's odd that the director chose to come out of retirement for something other than the best heist thriller he's ever made. 6/10