Pulp Fiction, Part 2: The Comeback Special

LOGAN LUCKY (B) - Stephen Soderbergh ends his premature retirement with a bang, a loose-limbed heist movie with an inspired ensemble cast of top-notch actors.

In a heist film that bookends with his mainstream work in the "Ocean's Eleven" series, Soderbergh slums with the rubes, ginning up a story of some West Virginia ne'er-do-wells who cross state lines to clean out a stadium's vault on the day of the biggest NASCAR race of the year. What could go wrong for them or for our fearless director?

For the most part, this is entertaining as hell, with a sterling cast. Channing Tatum stars as the ringleader, Jimmy Logan, conspiring with his siblings Clyde (Adam Driver) and Mellie (Riley Keough). Clyde is a monosyllabic war veteran who tends bar with a prosthetic left hand. Mellie is a hairdresser and the favorite aunt of Jimmy's cute daughter, Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie), a JonBenet Ramsey-type of pageant queen, stage-mom'd by Jimmy's ex, Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes). The women take a back seat to the men, including Daniel Craig as Joe Bang, a munitions expert who needs to be sprung from prison for a day in order to participate in the lark. Small roles can barely contain Dwight Yoakam as the prison warden and Hilary Swank as a Joe Friday-like FBI agent. (The less said about Seth MacFarlane as a cartoonish British (!) racecar driver the better.)

A crack crew, indeed, to execute a clever script by rookie screenwriter Rebecca Blunt, a narrative that only occasionally strains credulity, a decent percentage for a film like this. And Soderbergh sells it all with a swagger that stops short of showing off. He owes more than a little debt to the Coen brothers and their rural slapstick throwdowns.

The only nag here is the whiff of condescension that swirls around the entire production. These are Hollywood elites getting dirt under their fingernails portraying Appalachian-Americans with a wink and abandon. Isn't it just a bit insulting? (And people of color here tend to be human props in service to the story.)

Tatum (born in Alabama) and Keough (granddaughter of the King from Tupelo, Miss.) are the most credible at pulling off their characterizations. (They are also two actors in the zone lately.) Driver, as usual, is a beat off from the rest of the cast, and you don't know if Clyde's mental challenges come from birth or from the war. Yoakam is a hoot as the delusional warden who refuses to admit to the outside world that his prisoners are in full rebellion (a diversion to keep Clyde and Joe Bang from being noticed as AWOL). We also get just two tantalizing glimpses of a barely recognizable Katherine Waterston in short black hair as a potential love interest for Jimmy.

At a rotund two hours, this one could have been nipped and tucked by at least 15 minutes. A post-heist coda feels mismatched. But the script is smart, with its share of zingers, and it's hard not to get caught up in all the fun.

BONUS TRACK
SIDE EFFECTS* (2013) (A-minus) - Before his retirement from the big screen, Soderbergh bid farewell with this smoldering suspense film about a meek woman suffering from depression who kills her husband during a prescription-drug-induced stupor.

Soderbergh teams again with writer Scott Z. Burns (they scored with "Contagion" in 2010) to unspool a tight thriller that has Hitchcock bona fides and an '80s Brian De Palma sheen. Gripping from beginning to end, "Side Effects" boasts four actors bouncing off each other nicely. Rooney Mara (who would grow even more confident with "Carol") plays Emily, a sluggish housewife welcoming her insider-trader husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), home from prison. Their reunion does nothing to jerk her out of her chronic depression.

She seeks help from psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who is in the pocket of Big Pharma and eventually pushes on Emily a new drug, Ablixa. One of the side-effects is sleepwalking, and one day Emily awakes to a blood-soaked apartment and a dead husband. Did she kill him?

That's just the start of the twists and turns. It soon turns into a game of one-upmanship that draws in Emily's previous shrink, Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). The cat-and-mouse antics among Emily and the two doctors makes for delicious, old-fashioned fun. You can never be sure which way this one is going, and Soderbergh unravels things expertly.


* - We saw this movie upon its release but it fell through the cracks and never was reviewed. We right that wrong today.