'Logan Lucky' is inconsequentially entertaining

The film by Steven Soderbergh is, like the director's 'Ocean's' movies, a showcase for some funny actors to horse it up.

Steven Soderbergh’s “Logan Lucky,” written by Rebecca Blunt, is a down-home heist movie that comes across like a Southern-fried variation of one of his “Ocean's” films. Like those movies, it’s inconsequentially entertaining – a showcase for some funny actors to horse it up.

The plot centers on the robbery of the coffers of NASCAR during the Coca-Cola 600 at North Carolina's Charlotte Motor Speedway during Memorial Day weekend. The none-too-bright West Virginian Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), who has recently been laid off as a heavy equipment operator, and his equally dim Iraq War vet brother, Clyde (Adam Driver), who has a prosthetic arm and tends bar, engineer the heist with the help of a gang that also includes bank vault opener extraordinaire Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, with close-cropped blond crewcut), who is set to serve five more months in prison – a minor impediment to his involvement in the robbery, as it turns out.

The mechanics of the heist are rather sketchy, and the buddy-buddyisms could be cut by half. But the actors, including Katie Holmes as Jimmy’s ex-wife, who has sole custody of their daughter; Hilary Swank as a gimlet-eyed FBI agent; and Seth MacFarlane as an incredibly annoying British race car driver, all seem to know they are not performing Shakespeare. It’s often enjoyable and very forgettable, which may be as good as it gets for movies released in August. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for language and some crude comments.)