Baby Driver Film Review
A few months ago, when Edgar Wright was a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers, admittedly said that he had the idea for Baby Driver when he first heard The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s song Bellbottoms. He was 21 at the time, and literally couldn’t listen to the song without thinking of a car chase. Several years later he made (the very similar to Baby Driver) music video for Mint Royale’s “Blue Song” and the rest is history. Well if you count the in between disappointment of Ant Man’s dropping out and subsequent becoming one of the most respected, original, talented and renewed directors…
Yeah…That was the history i was talking about.
Ansel Elgort is Baby in Baby Driver. A young man with a love for music who works as the getaway driver for a rotating crew of bank robbers led by Doc (Kevin Spacey). He’s actually repaying a debt to Doc and is almost done with the life of crime. When he’s not behind the wheel, he creates remixes from snippets of conversations he records, and cares for his deaf foster father Joseph (CJ Jones). Baby also falls in love with Debora (Lilly James) a waitress in the diner where his late mother used to work, but his plans for a clean and honest living are cut short when Doc pulls him in for a postal office heist. Things will not go so smoothly I’m afraid.
For better of worse, Baby Driver is by far the most stylish and probably the perfectly executed movie of Edgar Wright’s career. Oh year… entertaining and fun too. If I go ahead and try and nitpick sure I can find some flaws in the script and in the casting (in some of the characters) but more on that later in this post. What comes right of the bat in this movie is the probably the best soundtrack in recent history. The track selection is so damn meticulous and well crafted it almost blends in to the movie and kinda makes an extra character. But what’s fascinating in that department is not just the selection but the collaboration of Wright with his sound mixing team. Every bullet is synchronized to every beat of the music track in that particular scene. Fascinating and breathtakingly original piece of film making don’t you think?
But the music is not there just to drive the movie. The music in Baby Driver is actually used as a way of expressing the two lead’s characters. We find out early the reasons for Baby’s fondness of music and even Deborah’s back story is somehow connected with music too. Music is a way of expressing emotions, and even a way of connecting and bonding. Just look at the scenes of Baby with Deborah or even better check out the ones with his foster father. I cannot think of better way for this character to bond with the people who mean so much to him.
I also liked the casting of Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzales and Kevin Spacey, but I especially enjoyed Spacey’s Dock character. Stone-faced and dead serious when it comes to business surprisingly he will show most character depth and progression of them all towards the end of the movie. Edgar Wright actually gave him a redeeming quality that is so lacking in this bunch of sociopathic thieves/murderers and it’s something to applaud about in Baby Driver. Which cannot be said for the rest of Doc’s team – especially about Bats (Jamie Foxx). The impulsive, violent member of Doc’s gang was annoying and frightening from the first second he walked into frame till the very last second that he exited. I hated Foxx’s character. I hated it.
Lilly James’s Deborah pretty much stays the same pixie girl epitome girlfriend, but Elgort’s Baby character is the most fascinating and layered from the pair. Elgort is truly a charming and fantastic even in the most nuanced scenes let alone in the most physically demanding ones. But frankly the one thing I was a little disappointed about him and his romance is that it was somehow put on the sidelines to everything else. Yes I understand the need to make it quirky and somewhat old-fashioned but I’d love to see more scenes involving Debora and Baby where they actually try and developed their relationship before she finds out about his actual job.
But even with some of the flaws, Baby Driver is a visceral master piece. It’s a movie that you’ll mostly won’t see any time soon, but also the movie that most likely several directors will attempt to emulate (or even replicate) in the near future. And they will fail. It’s the movie that should be taught at film schools (to future film directors and film editors) about how to make the prefect heist movie action scenes, but if you’re just a fan of the genre… Than Baby Driver is the perfect movie for you.