Logan Lucky

In Steven Soderbergh's hillbilly heist comedy Logan Lucky, the West Virginia prison where vault specialist Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) resides is pristine and peaceful. While only a small part of this caper takes place in the prison, this setting is indicative of a tone Soderbergh excels at in his studio comedies; on the surface, these stories are unencumbered by deeper sociopolitical struggles. In a word: Fun!

In the first scenes, Soderbergh paints Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), a good ol' boy who gets fired from his excavation job at a NASCAR track because of his limp. It might've been easy for a filmmaker to exploit that setup for sympathy, showing us how unbearably difficult life is for this blue-collar guy in poverty-stricken America. Instead, Soderbergh's hero immediately hatches a 10-step plan for breaking into the track's underground cash vault. This plan is also scrawled on a note that Jimmy's bro Clyde (Adam Driver) discovers -- "I see you've got a robbery to-do list on the refrigerator."

From there, the plot gets twisty, as the bros hire Joe and his bros. There's a lot to explain, with regard to the setting and the mechanics of the caper, but Soderbergh rarely gets bogged down in details.

First-time screenwriter Rebecca Blunt (rumored to be Jules Asner, Soderbergh's wife) never complicates things past a Robin Hood framing. If Asner really did write this script, I can only imagine she and Soderbergh laughing in bed at the phrase "Ocean's 7-11," which gets uttered by a reporter describing the thieves. If Soderbergh's first Ocean's had a pitch-perfect ensemble cast, this down-home version matches up in every way.