I wouldn’t see Patrick Hughes‘ The Hitman’s Bodyguard with a knife at my back. Mostly shitty reviews, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, same old action crap, 40% Rotten Tomatoes score…forget it. And yet it’ll earn over $20 million this weekend on 3377 screens. If it makes $21 million it will have averaged around $6200 per screen — not bad.
There’s irony in the fact that Steven Soderbergh‘s Logan Lucky, a smart, agreeably mellow heist film that’s allegedly better and smarter and generally more of a pro-level thing, isn’t doing as well. Yesterday it took in a lousy $2.8 million from 3,031 locations for a projected $7.7 million haul by Sunday night — nearly a third of what the Reynolds-Jackson film will make.
Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes and Hilary Swank…good cast, and all of them mouthing smart lines in just the right away. In my book Logan Lucky, which cost $29 million, is just as satisfying as any of the Ocean’s heist films, if not more so.
By yesterday morning Joe Popcorn had obviously decided to blow the Soderbergh off. Whyyyyeeeeeeeeee?
What did shitkicker types think? Did anyone see it last night in some Bumblefuck plex? HE tech guy Dominic Eardley caught a matinee in Louisville earlier this afternoon, and reports the theatre was nearly empty except for himself and a small group pf middle-aged women who came for Channing Tatum.
HE’s Logan Lucky problem: Tatum, Driver and Craig are much smarter than the guys who pulled off the Rififi or Topkapi heists, but they and others like them were dumb as fenceposts when it comes to making a common-sense choice as to who would make the best U.S. President, or at least not destroy the concept of basic sanity in terms of serving in the Oval Office. I just didn’t believe that Tatum and Driver and Craig could ever be as brilliant as all that. If they were truly brainy fellows they wouldn’t be doing time in jail, roaming around in pickup trucks, getting laid off, tending bar, driving forklifts and all the rest of it.
Nonetheless: Soderbergh is such a master, such an exacting orchestrator. This has been said repeatedly about many films, but Logan Lucky has really and truly been assembled like a fine Swiss watch. I really love hanging in Soderberghland. I relish his dry sense of humor, his laid-back naturalism and low-key way of shooting stuff, plus his cool framings and cutting style, etc. A total pro.
