Racing Films

Released in 2017 and now available on Netflix ‘Logan Lucky’ probably boasts the most jaw dropping star studded cast of any racing film ever made.  Let’s start at the top, we have Riley Keough, granddaughter of Elvis.  Hillary Swank who has two best actress Oscars.  Katie Holmes, Katie if you are reading this, I have always loved you more than Tom ever did.  The wonderful Katherine Waterson who has less prominent role but shows once again that she is destined for bigger things.  We get former U.S. Marine Adam Driver who was awesome in films like Star Wars, BlacKkKlansmen and let’s face it, every racing film needs a good Driver.  The list goes on, there is also Channing Tatum, Daniel Craig and Seth MacFarlane.  Country music singer / songwriter and double Grammy winner Dwight Yoakam also has a major role.  Then there is a host of cameos from NASCAR drivers; Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney. 

Needless to say, all this star talent cost a lot of money resulting in a budget of $39 million, which is actually still less than Days of Thunder at $55 million 27 years earlier.  Where the film may have saved some money was in the writing which was adapted from a screenplay by the relatively unknown Rebecca Blunt.  The screenplay was so enticing the prospect of making the film coaxed director Steven Soderbergh out of retirement at the age of 54.  The reason why Soderbergh was able to retire so young initially was he did quite well out of some films he made such as Erin Brokovich, Traffic, Oceans 11, 12 and 13.  He has a filmography catalogue that as at 2018 had pulled in over $2 billion dollars.

A common measure of film success is how it has done at the US box office.  I found a useful website recently called The Numbers – ‘Where Data and the Movie Business Meet’, which gives the ability to create charts of box office comparisons between films.  In the chart I have added below you can see a comparison between ‘Logan Lucky’ and two other popular comedy films involving NASCAR; Taleladega Nights and Days of Thunder.  As you can see Logan Lucky did not break any box office records for the genre, in fact it probably only managed to break even despite it being full of star power.  This appears to be largely down to marketing, Steven Soderbergh chose to release this film under banner of the 'independant' FilmNation Entertainment rather than one of the big film behemoth companies.  This was a noble endeavour but probably has kept the film hidden from the eyes of a lot of people who would enjoy it.  Adding in the international box office the film still did fairly well bringing in a total of $49 million which puts it in the top 500 for the worldwide box office for comedy movies.

Perhaps another explanation for the film’s low profile at the box office was the plot, let’s keep it simple, this is a heist film.  Like many of Soderbergh’s other films an elaborate plot is hatched to steal a large amount of money by some people that have a good moral reason to steal it and some interesting character quirks… [Insert plot of Oceans 11 here].  Yep that’s it, this film is pretty much Oceans 11, instead of the vault at the Bellagio you have the vault at Charlotte Motor Speedway and instead of the heist occurring during a large boxing event it occurs during the CocaCola 600, which presents many great opportunities for some Ford advertising. 

This is where the real genius of the film emerges which is the ‘screenwriter’ Rebecca Blunt.  Somehow, she has pulled off the most audacious heist of all, as a total newcomer she managed to take the plot of Oceans 11, disguise it with a motor race, a racetrack and some rednecks and then go on to sell it back to Soderbergh himself.  For her audacity she is awarded with the second credit to roll at the end of the film.  Quite an achievement for a newcomer, or was it?

As it turns out Rebecca Blunt is a pseudonym for Jules Asner.  Asner is, according to her Wikipedia profile, “an elite model” who “…shared a bunk-room with Cindy Crawford during her modelling career”.  She is also “…known as a long-time E! personality. During her peak with the network she hosted six hours of programming daily.” Soderbergh clearly enjoyed his daily 6-hour daily doses of Asner as he decided to up this to 24-hour doses by deciding to marry her.  Yep, the unknown writer Rebecca Blunt is actually Steven Soderbergh’s wife.  They chose to use a pseudonym because they did not want the focus on the film to be about a husband directing his wife’s story. 

If you can get over the fact that the Soderburgh’s have tried to hoodwink us all there are some things to enjoy about this film.  The race driver cameos are hard to spot and fun to keep an eye out for, the quirky characters are funny and there is some decent Ford v Chevy banter.  There are some great one liners, my favourite being “I hope you have beginner’s luck getting that thing into first”, which has got to be one on the best driving competence burns ever, I hope someone has that up their sleeve for Nikita Mazepin’s start to the F1 season.  Probably my favourite character in the film was Warden Burns who is brilliantly played by musician Dwight Yoakham.  In one scene Warden Burns has a hilarious debate with a room full of rioting prisoners about which order the game of thrones books and TV series came out as part of the hostage negotiations.  On the downside Seth MacFarlane is terrible, although I do think his character is loosely based on former NASCAR driver Boris Said.

Despite enjoying the film, the fact that it is a disguised Oceans remake under the guise of introducing a new and exciting screenwriter puts a cloud over it.  I was left feeling that the real reasons for the pseudonym were more along the lines of they did not want the story to be ‘Soderberg recycles plot from Oceans 11’, no matter how good this may be for the environment.  Another reason could be that when you already have billions of dollars from making films it is useful to have your wife make some as well to help square things away with the IRS.  I am only speculating of course, and this speculation is coming from a place of disappointment.  The big heist here is the $49 million that was taken from honest punters at the box office who thought they were going to see a new film by an exciting new screenwriter. Whatever the reasons were I also don’t understand how a husband and wife making a film together is a bad news story?  Who knows it might even inspire other couples to do something constructive and creative together?  So, I’m left disappointed by Steven Soderbergh’s antics, he’s taken some of my favourite actors and wasted their talents with a very predictable plot and I now feel violated because I enjoyed the experience. To quote Boris Said, “The only way he could make amends is if he came here right now and I beat his ass.”