Soderbergh back with a bang.

No one in Hollywood ever truly retires. Whether it’s through poor health, swiftly advancing age, or a simple disconnection from the industry; directors stepping away from the camera, before making a speedy career U-turn, has been all the rage in Hollywood in recent years. In fact, casually announcing, then promptly cancelling retirement has become so old hat that we’re likely to get into ‘the boy who cried wolf’ territory, if we’re not careful.

In the crazy, 24/7 word of moviemaking, there’s simply no walking away from something that many directors will admit is a life-dominating career. Either that, or it all amounts to a desperate PR stunt. I’ll let you make up your own minds on that one.

Of all the retirement U-turns in recent times, surely the least surprising of them all came from Steven Soderbergh. Arriving just three years after walking away from cinema, the breaking news of his big comeback came as a shock to precisely no one.

Once aptly described by Roger Ebert as the “poster boy of the Sundance generation”, Soderbergh has dedicated the best part of three decades to the advancement of independent cinema. An auteur to his core, the director has become indie cinema’s chief flagbearer and, even while working deep within the confines of the Hollywood system, he has always managed to stay true to his filmmaking ideals.

While his divorce from the film industry may expose a fundamental flaw in his connection with modern cinema, there’s simply no earthly way he’d could stay away for long. With a truly unique funding and distribution model, and with that indie spirit still burning strong within him; Logan Lucky sees Soderbergh return to his roots and, crucially, rediscover his mojo.

With funds in short supply and a family curse hanging over their heads, brothers, Jimmy and Clyde Logan (Channing Tatum and Adam Driver) hatch a plan to fix both problems by robbing the Charlotte Motor Speedway – the spiritual home of NASCAR. Recruiting the services of convicted safecracker, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) and his two dim-witted brothers, Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (Jack Quaid), the team lay out plans for an elaborate job, bravely set amidst the legendary Coca-Cola 600 Memorial Day race. With confidence and heart outstripping common sense, this ramshackle group of oddballs look to have bitten off more than they can chew but, with a little of that illusive luck on their side, the brothers may just shake the Logan curse and pull off the heist of a lifetime.

Funding and distributing the film entirely independently, Soderbergh has effectively sidestepped the traditional Hollywood studio model and, in doing so, Logan Lucky represents an incredibly ambitious attempt to subvert the system to which the director had grown distant. Taken in isolation, this would appear a monumental gamble but, with even a rudimentary understanding of how he operates, you’ll know that this is exactly how Steven Soderbergh likes it.

An auteur through and through, Soderbergh’s career has always been on his terms and his terms only. From the sublime (Out of Sight) to the ridiculous (Contagion), from nuts and bolts indie (Sex, Lies, and Videotape) to high-end gloss (Ocean’s Eleven), and everything in between; if the director can’t do things his way, he doesn’t do them at all. But, while they occasionally miss their critical or financial mark, the director’s films represent a wildly creative and incredibly varied body of work, paralleled by very few in the business. Pulling together aspects from much of his extensive back catalogue, Logan Lucky represents Steven Soderbergh’s career in microcosm.

At this point, I think it’s safe to assume that Soderbergh has something of a soft spot for the heist genre. While it’s structural similarities to Ocean’s Eleven are hard to miss, the most striking element of Logan Lucky, however, is the way it functions as a decidedly unpolished counterpoint to the polished sleekness of the Oceans films.

Possessing all the crowd-pleasing thrills of the classic Hollywood heist, while feeling quintessentially indie; Logan Lucky feels like the perfect confluence of Soderbergh’s two, conflicting worlds. The leftfield sense of humour, the overtly off-the-beaten-track location, and the decidedly oddball characters all feel anchored in the Sundance side of the Steven Soderbergh universe (Soderverse? No, that just sounds wrong); yet the film’s distinctly poppy structure and pleasingly upbeat tone should strike a chord with a mainstream, Ocean’s Eleven crowd.

With a filmography as wildly varied as Soderbergh’s, it’s a tough job unpicking their defining characteristics but, if there’s one trait that shines brighter than most, it’s charm. From the affable swagger of Ocean’s Eleven, to the affecting humanity Erin Brockovich; Soderbergh’s ability to squeeze charm from almost any situation is extraordinary and, while Logan Lucky doesn’t quite reach the heights of the director’s best efforts, it’s certainly one of his most amiable.

Logan Lucky is Soderbergh’s scruffy, middle finger riposte to an industry he has openly distanced himself from. Although the narrative dynamics mirror many of his most mainstream offerings, this is the director free of constraint and ready to show the world that, while he’s still able to tell easily consumable stories for multiplex audiences, they are now told on his terms and with his characters.

Stuffed with outlying characters, squeezing through life in a largely invisible section of America, Logan Lucky’s decision to focus on those on the fringes of society is an inspired one that delivers on heart and depth in a way that the Ocean’s films just couldn’t. As the eponymous Logans, Jimmy and Clyde provide characters far more profound than their collective image projects and, while it would be easy to paint them with broad, stereotypical redneck brushstrokes; Soderbergh’s touch is far lighter than that.

With back stories full of bad luck, war wounds, and failed sports careers; Jimmy and Clyde’s tragic undercurrent runs as a fascinating contrast to the fun, throwaway nature of the plot and this ability to anchor such knockabout shenanigans to a world of tragedy, poverty, and desperation is what makes Logan Lucky shine.

As the film’s stars, Channing Tatum and Adam Driver deliver fantastically understated performances; working perfectly together as the Logan siblings to convey the necessary levels of world-weariness and desperation, while offering pitch-perfect timing and a playful West Virginian accent that provides numerous moments of low-key comedy gold.

The two leads are surrounded by a strong support cast, in an array of delightfully off-beat roles, but it’s in Daniel Craig that Logan Lucky really finds its gear. Rumbling along at its own, deliberate pace; the film’s energy ramps up significantly the moment Craig’s delightfully idiosyncratic Joe Bang hits the screen and, from then on in, the ride is a pretty wild one. Quite frankly, after his increasingly strained relationship with the Bond franchise, it’s just nice to see the man have a good time with a role, and his amusement with the character is positively infectious.

The film’s cast appear to be having an absolute blast and, while on-screen fun doesn’t necessarily translate to viewing fun, the pure joy on display is hard to resist. Given the premise, the film’s slapstick comedy and physical gags were always to be expected, but we’re dealing with Steven Soderbergh here, so things are never that simple. The director constantly utilises the Logan Lucky’s structure and off-kilter humour as a tool to undermine expectations, as the film often veers off into places you wouldn’t expect it to go, however, although the leftfield approach is admirable, it doesn’t always connect.

Meandering and ponderous at times, the film’s structure is often too loose for its own good; leading to an erratic pace and a structure that never feels totally satisfying. Although it’s been billed as an all-out comedy, that’s not entirely what you get, as Logan Lucky sees Soderbergh returning to his indie roots and delivering a brand of odd-ball, quirky humour that certainly won’t suit everyone. The comedy is a patchy affair, with more than a few beats that fail to hit their target but it’s in a rather peculiar, and decidedly unfunny Seth MacFarlane cameo, that the film falls flat.

There are certainly moments in the film where thing don’t quite click, however; when Logan Lucky works, it works and, considering the way Steven Soderbergh threw in his directing towel, this feels like the perfect comeback. Logan Lucky is the perfect amalgamation of the director’s greatest hits and, through the union of Ocean’s Eleven­ swagger and his trademark indie quirk, Soderbergh has been able to concoct a winning combination. 

Rolling along on a wave of enthusiasm and jauntiness, the film’s cast, led by a wonderfully zany Daniel Craig, are clearly having a whale of a time, but whether this has reawakened the director’s passion for filmmaking, only time will tell. When the director announced his retirement, no one truly believed he’d be gone forever but, then again, no one truly believed his comeback would be as gleeful and enjoyable as this. Who knows where the director’s career will go from here but, for now at least, it’s just good to know cinema has one of its greats back on board.