Where would heist movies be without the Big Score — that payoff so irresistible it can lure the most jaded desperado out of hiding?

It’s the kind of temptation that propels many of Steven Soderbergh’s movies, and motivates him as a filmmaker, too. His latest feature, “Logan Lucky,” is once again about a group of larcenous but lovable characters: this time, a laid-off construction worker (Channing Tatum) who recruits his brother (Adam Driver) and sister (Riley Keough) as well as a volatile prison convict (Daniel Craig) to pull off the Nascar racetrack robbery of a lifetime.

“Logan Lucky,” which opens Aug. 18, puts a down-home spin on the elaborate capers in Mr. Soderbergh’s glitzier “Ocean’s Eleven” series. It is also the first theatrical release he has directed in four years, following what appeared to be several very unambiguous pronouncements that he was giving up filmmaking altogether.

Now that he seems to be going back on his word, Mr. Soderbergh is as gleeful as he is humbled. At various times in his career, he’s been an art house auteur, a must-have director of the moment, a renegade and a recluse. But he’s found what he wants to do is make movies that, whatever genre they fall into, can be seen by as many people as possible.