Baby Driver (2017)

Review

113min

Genre:       Action, Crime, Romance, Thriller

Director:    Edgar Wright

Cast:         Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey…and more

Writer:      Edgar Wright

-Synopsis-

A gifted but damaged young getaway driver for a ruthless crime boss struggles to break the shackles of his criminal life, after becoming caught between a blossoming romance and his commitment to one last dangerous heist, in this stylish all-star action romp from the writer/director of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’.

After exploding onto the scene and delighting audiences with British comedy homages to American genre films, and putting music at the centre of an unconventional love story in 2010’s zany mashup ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’, Edgar Wright combines the two and returns from the filmmaking wilderness after only one film in the last seven years, with a healthy budget and an impressive cast for his slickest film to date—a high-octane and majorly entertaining tribute to the classic American heist thriller and car chase film.

Young Ansel Elgort stars as the eponymous iPod-carrying, headphone-sporting ‘Baby’; a physically and emotionally scarred orphan and loner, reluctantly living his life of crime to the beat of his own soundtrack as a skilled getaway driver for frosty criminal mastermind ‘Doc’ (Kevin Spacey), pulling risky jobs on the streets of Atlanta. When ‘Baby’ falls for pretty young waitress ‘Debora’ (Lily James) and his felony days seem to be behind him, just when he thought he was out . . . they pull him back in for one more dicey score with a dangerous crew—wild criminal lovebirds ‘Darling’ (Eiza González) & ‘Buddy’ (Jon Hamm) and the unhinged ‘Bats’ (Jamie Foxx)—testing Baby’s loyalties and putting his future in jeopardy.

If there’s one thing Hollywood can consistently churn out it’s the crime action/thriller with plenty of car chases, most of them tedious and soulless studio-crafted affairs amounting to little more than a lavish collection of action set-pieces, woven together by questionable narratives and underwhelming characters—some of them even becoming hugely lucrative franchises which shall remain nameless. Enter Edgar Wright to buck the trend by hand-crafting a stylish and consistently enjoyable action/thriller romp with all the bells & whistles and plenty of humour, paying tribute to the many classics and lesser know films which influenced it and formed the director’s cinematic education.

‘Baby Driver’ is a slick and stylish movie joyride from Wright, an ambitious and funny pop-culture conscious wail of a time, in the form of a suitably adrenalized and turbocharged slice of quintessential American filmmaking from its British director. It’s packed with gripping and mercifully CGI-free action-sequences and stunt work, featuring some incredible driving skills and plenty of drifting—but this is more than your typical modern collection of flashy visuals and escalating action, featuring characters and a narrative that will keep you fully engaged and entertained.

After capturing the attention of tweens and millennials in films like ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ and the ‘Divergent’ series, Ansel Elgort shines in a potentially career-defining titular role, alongside young Brit Lily James as a convincing southern belle and ably supported by a cast of stars led by the great Kevin Spacey—but the true co-star of the film is the music, a soundtrack of some classic and lesser known rock, pop and soul tunes which not only flavour the action and drive the narrative (pardon the pun), but also play a key role in it.

Wright makes no bones about the many cinematic influences he draws upon here, from classic 60s and 70s crime thrillers like ‘The French Connection’ and ‘Bullitt’, to lesser known gems of the era like ‘The Getaway’ and some influential cult favourites like ‘The Driver’. The graphic influence of criminal lovebird narratives like ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ and ‘True Romance’ are also evident, as is the effect of more recent heist and car chase movies like ‘Point Break’, ‘Heat’ and ‘Drive’—yet despite the director expertly blending all these factors with his own vision, ‘Baby Driver’ is not exactly the faultless modern classic that some commentators have made it out to be.

Despite the creative way with which several tropes and character archetypes are handled, this isn’t the most inventive movie you’ll see and it ultimately amounts to a nifty grouping of variations on established themes. There certainly isn’t the charm or quirkiness of Wright’s ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ of films with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, while some of the dialogue isn’t as tight as you might expect, occasionally coming off more like parody than it was clearly intended to be.

Yet there’s plenty to love about this funny and often violent mix of action, characters and panache, and story of young love and new beginnings, with Wright’s exhilarating joyride proving that a jump-up in budget and scale hasn’t blunted his cinematic touch . . . making us really wonder what his version of ‘Ant-Man’ would have looked like.

The Bottom Line . . .

A familiar yet fresh and invigorating crime caper and action thriller with plenty of humour and bags of attitude, Edgar Wright’s stylish and entertaining ode to car chase classics and timeless heist dramas is what popcorn cinema should be—thanks to its cavalcade of stars and a soundtrack which shines even brighter. If you like your juicy car chases and balls-out action but are tired of modern Hollywood schlock with characters and narratives that make you cringe, then this is the film for you.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

The Driver (1978)

After a botched heist, an enigmatic young loner working as the best getaway driver in the city becomes the target of a tough and determined detective, only to find an unlikely ally in the form of a beautiful witness to one of his crimes in this 70s car chase cult classic crime thriller from Walter Hill.

Directed by Walter Hill and starring Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani among others.

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