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Logan Lucky is a 2017 American Heist film comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh, based on a screenplay written by his wife Jules Asner (credited as Rebecca Blunt). Soderbergh came out of retirement to direct the film and distributed it independently through his own company, Fingerprint Releasing. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston, and Sebastian Stan. The film follows the Logan family and their attempt to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway while avoiding both racetrack security and the FBI.
Logan Lucky premiered in Knoxville, Tennessee on August 9, 2017, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 18, 2017 by Bleecker Street. The film received positive reviews, with many critics praising the cast's performances and Soderbergh's direction, and grossed $48 million worldwide.
Jimmy goes to a bar tended by his ex-soldier brother Clyde, who lost his lower arm while he was a soldier in the Iraq War. Max Chilblain, a pretentious NASCAR team owner, makes fun of Clyde's disability, leading to a fight with Jimmy, while Clyde sets fire to Max's car. The next day, Jimmy tells Clyde his plan to rob the Speedway, exploiting his knowledge of its underground pneumatic tube system for moving its vast amount of cash.
Clyde and Jimmy recruit Mellie, incarcerated safe-cracker Joe Bang, and Joe's dimwitted younger brothers, Sam and Fish. The team plan to break Joe out of prison and return him later that day. Clyde intentionally gets himself sent to the same prison on a minor charge.
With the unknowing help of Gleema, a woman working at the vault, Sam and Fish infest the Speedway's tube system with painted cockroaches, determining which tubes go to the vault. While gathering supplies, Jimmy meets his former schoolmate Sylvia, who gives him a tetanus shot inside her mobile clinic, which is in need of donations. When Jimmy learns that construction at the speedway is being completed ahead of schedule, they are forced to mount the heist a week earlier, during the much busier Coca-Cola 600 race on Memorial Day weekend.
Joe arranges for fellow inmates to stage a riot, resulting in a lockdown that hides his and Clyde's escape. Mellie meets them in a Ford Shelby GT350 stolen from Moody. At the speedway, Sam and Fish blow up a cell tower to disable the credit card machines, forcing vendors to accept cash only. Clyde, Jimmy and Joe enter the tube room, and Joe uses an explosive improvised from bleach, gummy bears and a dietary salt substitute to blow open the gate from the tube to the vault.
The team connect the tube to a giant vacuum pump, and suck up all the cash into garbage bags. Jimmy accidentally reverses the direction of the vacuum, sucking Clyde's prosthetic arm into the machine. Security guards investigate the smoke from the explosion, but are diverted by Earl, one of Clyde's bar patrons. Sam and Fish get the money out and into Jimmy's truck.
On his way out, Clyde is recognized by Chilblain and hits him, then he and Joe sneak back into the prison disguised as firefighters. Jimmy, having retrieved Clyde’s arm from the machine, makes it to his daughter's pageant just in time to see her perform his favorite song, "Take Me Home, Country Roads." He then abandons the money and anonymously informs the police of its location.
FBI agent Sarah Grayson investigates the heist, dubbed “Ocean's Seven-Eleven" in the press. While she suspects Jimmy, Clyde and Joe, she has no evidence. Due to the prison warden's unwillingness to report the riot, the refuting of Chilblain's eyewitness account by his disgruntled and bitter race driver, Dayton White, and the speedway president's satisfaction with the money's recovery and insurance settlement, the case is closed after six months.
When Joe returns home after prison, he finds a garbage bag of money buried in his yard. Sylvia receives an anonymous donation for her clinic. And the inmate who orchestrated the prison riot and the woman working at the vault each receive an envelope stuffed with cash.
Unknown to Joe and his brothers, Jimmy had filled extra trash bags during the heist, which he hid at the dump to retrieve later. Now working in a Lowe's store and having bought a house near his daughter and ex-wife's home, Jimmy happily reunites with Clyde, Mellie, Joe, and Sylvia at the bar. A patron at the bar is Grayson, who chats up Clyde and shares a toast of drinks with him, saying she's just passing through, but "hoping to stay a while."
In North America, the film was released alongside The Hitman's Bodyguard as well as the wide expansion of Wind River, and was projected to gross $7–9 million from 3,008 theaters in its opening weekend. Having already covered the cost of the production budget through international advance sales, and the costs of prints and advertising through a deal with Amazon, Soderbergh said a debut of $15 million would be needed to be considered a success. The film grossed $2.8 million on its first day (including $525,000 from Thursday night previews). It went on to open to $7.6 million, finishing third at the box office, behind The Hitman's Bodyguard and . In its second weekend, the film took in $4.2 million, dropping 44.2% and finishing 5th, in what was the lowest combined grossing weekend (for the top 10 films) since September 2001. During the following weekend, which preceded Labor Day, the film made $4.4 million over three days (an increase of 4%), and an estimated $5.5 million over the four-day weekend. It was again part of a historically low weekend, as it was the worst combined holiday weekend since 1998.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a positive review, writing: "Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky is a high-spirited, low-down blast." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, saying: "This is a good-times film that doesn't put on airs, dress to impress or pretend to be something it isn't. It just aims to please and does a pretty good job of it." Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, praising the smooth direction and efficiency of storytelling Soderbergh brought to the film, and stating that other than needing additional scenes to give its "oddball characters" more depth, Logan Lucky is “precision-tooled entertainment made by experts, and sometimes more than that. Watching it is like finding money in the pocket of a coat that you haven't worn in years." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it "a terrific, twisty, funny-as-hell crime flick about so-called hicks who decide that making America great again starts right at home." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: " Logan Lucky is great fun and one of the most purely entertaining movies of the year."
Rex Reed of The New York Observer was critical of the film, and described Soderbergh as an overrated director. Reed complained that the film takes a slower pace than Ocean's Eleven, and although he praised the camera work, music and ham acting, he concluded: "It doesn't work. Logan Lucky is as charming and welcome as toenail fungus."
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