Film Review: Magic Mike (2012)

This picture is the end result of a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to find a decent image from the film that did not feature a shirtless Channing Tatum.

Steven Soderbergh has always been a mercurial talent, able to move smoothly from making mainstream films with big name stars to off-kilter experimental films without losing step, all the while maintaining his own style and voice on every project. Within the last twelve months alone, he has made a bleakly realistic disaster movie and a minimalist action thriller, both of which were vastly different in scope, but which were unmistakeably his own. He even found time to squeeze in some second-unit work on one of the most successful films of the year. Even given how varied his workload has been, it says something that Soderbergh's latest film, set amongst the lives of male strippers in Florida, is probably the strangest prospect of them all.