By guest columnist Caleb Luther.
Logan Lucky is a film that I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time now. From the look of the trailers, it definitely seemed like some weird offspring of an early Coen Brothers film like Raising Arizona. As we all know, that’s not a bad thing.
So did it deliver on that idea? You bet it did.
What we essentially have is a mashup of a heist movie like Oceans 11 (Steven Soderbergh did that too) and a quirky character comedy that takes place in the South. First off, the film impressed me a lot with how well written each character is. Everybody is fully realized and (almost) everybody serves a major purpose.
It’s also nice to see a comedic film that’s filmed so well. The cinematography is consistently gorgeous and the attention to detail is off the charts.
As someone who lives in West Virginia (where the film partially takes place), I can laugh at these characters with absolutely no problem. These characters are not completely idiotic. Sure, they have their flaws, but there’s a human element in the middle of it all that brings a surprisingly emotional edge to the film. This is also not a complete laugh riot, but when it’s funny, it’s extraordinarily funny.
Of course, this movie can’t walk away without a couple problems. I personally feel like the movie ran about 10 minutes too long. It feels like it’s about to wrap up, but then it just keeps going. I’m also not a huge fan of the ending, but the positives are so great that I can almost overlook it. Nonetheless, Logan Lucky is a highly entertaining high concept character comedy that will likely improve on multiple visits.
Caleb Luther is all about movies and music and such. Find more on instagram and bandcamp.