Just call Steven Soderbergh the Boy Who Cried Retirement. Back in 2013, the director had announced he would no longer be making films. But it wasn’t long after that that he began to pop up in various capacities on TV and the big screen—directing two seasons of The Knick, for instance, producing a number of features, and even turning cinematographer for the 2015 sequel to his own Magic Mike. And now, he’s back in the director’s chair once again with the new Logan Lucky, effectively bringing the whole “retirement” charade that no one truly believed to an official end.

Thank god for that.

Because Logan Lucky reminds us how no one quite has his flair for the heist comedy. The man behind the Ocean’s trilogy, Soderbergh possesses a real knack for crafting breezy, wacky crime capers, generally featuring top-notch actors having a blast. While he pretty much imports the same formula he used back in the day, and though it might fall short of the stylish fun of the Ocean’s films (the first two, at least), there’s still enough to love and laugh at in Logan Lucky—with a huge debt owed to the cast— to fully merit his return.

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) has begun to wonder whether that “Logan curse” his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) keeps muttering about isn’t a real thing. Not only has the West Virginian native been laid off his construction job thanks to his bum knee—the very same injury that had once brought Jimmy’s pro-football career to a crashing halt—but his ex-wife (Katie Holmes), now settled down with someone with rather more stable prospects, has also informed him that she is planning to move, taking their daughter (Farrah Mackenzie) across state lines and rendering Jimmy’s visits difficult.

It’s in order to remain in Sadie’s life that a desperate Jimmy cooks up a plan to rob the upcoming Charlotte Motor Speedway NASCAR race in North Carolina—a mega-motorsports event where tons of cash is bound to change hands. You know that job Jimmy had been kicked off? It had to do with repairing sinkholes under that very racetrack, and while there, he had managed to get a pretty clear idea of how the money is going to be moved from concession stands to a vault via an underground mechanism of pneumatic tubes. Jimmy hopes to intercept these cash-carrying tubes before they can reach the safe and make off with the money. But he can’t do it alone.

So, he enlists Clyde—an Iraq veteran who had lost an arm in the war and has been tending the bar at a local establishment since his return home—and their sister, Millie (Riley Keough), a hairstylist with a yen for fast cars, in his ambitious scheme, neither putting up too much of a fight. But breaking into the underground system will require more specialised skills than the three possess, for which they must ring up the aptly named Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), an explosives expert and something of a wild card—not to mention, a touch on the incarcerated side at present.

If you’ve watched even one of the Ocean’s films, you won’t find very much that is surprising about the plotting in Logan Lucky—not to imply that it’s not interesting, of course. Soderbergh has always enjoyed dreaming up these elaborate, implausible robberies, made up of little parts moving together, any of which could malfunction and bring the whole machine to a standstill. Formulaic though they may be, much of the appeal of a Soderbergh heist film lies in watching those elements whir and click into place, and that’s certainly true of his newest.

What does set Logan Lucky apart, to rather state the obvious, is its distinctive deep-fried Southern-country setting, a choice that—at this particular juncture in American history—feels like it should signal a statement of some sort, but Soderbergh and screenwriter Rebecca Blunt (whose actual existence is debatable, but that’s beside the point) make sure to steer clear of politics as far as possible. Probably owing in part to the fact that the director is himself a product of the region, but even as cracks are made about the heartland lifestyle—in fact, Soderbergh seems determined to beat everyone to the punch, with characters tossing around labels like “hillbilly heist”, “redneck robbery” and Ocean’s 7-Eleven to describe the robbery—there’s a genuine warmth and affection that comes through, warding off broad caricaturisation.

Indeed, for every dig at a drawn-out twang or the antics of a pre-teen beauty queen, Logan Lucky makes up with subtle nods to more serious context-specific resentments: irregularity of jobs, the welfare of communities held hostage to greedy corporations, poorly-functioning healthcare and law-enforcement systems, and an overall sense of being forgotten by the state, to name a few. More importantly, though, the film is a celebration of the resourcefulness of these people, of their rich inner lives and unexpected ingenuity, amid the general disillusionment with their lot. 

Whatever its other merits, however, I can’t imagine Logan Lucky would have been as effective with a different cast. Though I’d been skeptical of Tatum’s abilities across his first few films, the actor has truly come into his own of late and is proving a particular good fit in comedies like this one. He shares excellent chemistry with Driver—whose career trajectory is proving one of the more interesting Hollywood has witnessed in recent times. But this is Craig’s show to steal, and we’ve never seen him like this before, such a departure from his grim, bespoke-suited Bond avatar as to be practically unrecognisable, and immensely fun to watch as the white-bleached, incendiary inmate. You just can’t get enough of the guy.

The film could have been a touch shorter; it lags towards the end, detracting from the urgency of the climax. And there are a few bits and bobs that I could’ve done without—an annoying character played by Seth MacFarlane that just felt too forced and cartoonish, and a latter, unconvincing cameo by Hilary Swank in the role of a tough FBI agent. But these aside, the film is a good time and if that whiff of a sequel turns out to be an actual thing, I’d be happy to reunite with the Logans—so long as they drag Joe Bang along—any day.