Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez
Baby (Elgort) is a getaway driver extraordinaire with a knack for speeding and maneuvering his way out of police chases while listening to music blasting on his iPod's earbuds. We learn he was involved in a car accident as a child which killed his parents and left him with permanent ringing in his ears. The music, which he listens to most of the day, drowns out the ringing, but not the trauma. His criminal cohorts find him very odd and not unreasonably wonder if Baby can safely do his job while listening to loud music. He can. But, the criminal life is not for him. He is kind of an indentured servant to crime lord Doc (Spacey), who caught a teenage Baby stealing from him years ago and forces him to drive the getaway car for various heists in order to repay his debt. After a successful, ingenious elusion of the police in the opening minutes, Baby has one heist left to square things with Doc and begin life anew.
If only it were that simple. Baby Driver is a slick entertainment which moves as fast as Baby drives. It is not a simple caper movie, but for most of its length, it's a taut, crisp thriller with fascinating people populating the story. The ending falters a bit, mostly because the movie saddles itself with shopworn clichés such as The Killer Who Won't Die and Roger Ebert's famous Fallacy of the Talking Killer, in which a guy simply needs to pull the trigger and eliminate the hero, but he decides to give a sermon and give the hero a chance to escape.
Doc's crew for his latest heist are Bats (Foxx), who may be batshit crazy, but is also a cunning, trigger happy time bomb of a human being. He is forever on edge with suspicions about his cohorts and this is Foxx's best performance in years. There is also the lovey-dovey couple of Darling (Gonzalez) and Buddy (Hamm), who are more willing to trust Baby. But don't let their public displays of affection fool you, they are just as deadly as Bats, but conceal their sociopathic tendencies better. The leader, Doc, is played by Kevin Spacey as only Kevin Spacey can. He can verbally dress down his crew without raising his voice and yes, he does have a bit of a soft spot for Baby while possessing a total admiration for his skill.
Baby, despite his eccentricities and baggage he is saddled with, is unfortunately the least interesting member of the cast. He simply can't amp up the wattage the way Foxx, Hamm, and Spacey can, which isn't to say Elgort does a bad job. Even his love interest, the sweet, innocent Debora (James) has a way of intriguing us with her straightforward manner of reaching the closed-off Baby. Baby is more the steady force to which all of the others react. He has a stretch of decency, especially in the way he cares for his deaf foster father, and we sense this life of crime is killing him. He just wants to hit the road with Debora and never look back.
I admit I've grown weary of car chases and shootouts in movies, but Baby Driver presents them in a fresh way. The action sequences are scored to the rhythms of the action, with beats of percussion underscoring the gunshots. The chases and the music are how the troubled Baby expresses himself. His actions dictate who he is more than his words or personality. I was almost on the cusp of a three-and-a-half star review, but then the action spills over into the land of ridiculousness, and thus the three-star review. Characters who are shot several times not only don't die, but manage to correctly anticipate where another character will be next and drive there. They obviously read ahead in the script.
Baby (Elgort) is a getaway driver extraordinaire with a knack for speeding and maneuvering his way out of police chases while listening to music blasting on his iPod's earbuds. We learn he was involved in a car accident as a child which killed his parents and left him with permanent ringing in his ears. The music, which he listens to most of the day, drowns out the ringing, but not the trauma. His criminal cohorts find him very odd and not unreasonably wonder if Baby can safely do his job while listening to loud music. He can. But, the criminal life is not for him. He is kind of an indentured servant to crime lord Doc (Spacey), who caught a teenage Baby stealing from him years ago and forces him to drive the getaway car for various heists in order to repay his debt. After a successful, ingenious elusion of the police in the opening minutes, Baby has one heist left to square things with Doc and begin life anew.
If only it were that simple. Baby Driver is a slick entertainment which moves as fast as Baby drives. It is not a simple caper movie, but for most of its length, it's a taut, crisp thriller with fascinating people populating the story. The ending falters a bit, mostly because the movie saddles itself with shopworn clichés such as The Killer Who Won't Die and Roger Ebert's famous Fallacy of the Talking Killer, in which a guy simply needs to pull the trigger and eliminate the hero, but he decides to give a sermon and give the hero a chance to escape.
Doc's crew for his latest heist are Bats (Foxx), who may be batshit crazy, but is also a cunning, trigger happy time bomb of a human being. He is forever on edge with suspicions about his cohorts and this is Foxx's best performance in years. There is also the lovey-dovey couple of Darling (Gonzalez) and Buddy (Hamm), who are more willing to trust Baby. But don't let their public displays of affection fool you, they are just as deadly as Bats, but conceal their sociopathic tendencies better. The leader, Doc, is played by Kevin Spacey as only Kevin Spacey can. He can verbally dress down his crew without raising his voice and yes, he does have a bit of a soft spot for Baby while possessing a total admiration for his skill.
Baby, despite his eccentricities and baggage he is saddled with, is unfortunately the least interesting member of the cast. He simply can't amp up the wattage the way Foxx, Hamm, and Spacey can, which isn't to say Elgort does a bad job. Even his love interest, the sweet, innocent Debora (James) has a way of intriguing us with her straightforward manner of reaching the closed-off Baby. Baby is more the steady force to which all of the others react. He has a stretch of decency, especially in the way he cares for his deaf foster father, and we sense this life of crime is killing him. He just wants to hit the road with Debora and never look back.
I admit I've grown weary of car chases and shootouts in movies, but Baby Driver presents them in a fresh way. The action sequences are scored to the rhythms of the action, with beats of percussion underscoring the gunshots. The chases and the music are how the troubled Baby expresses himself. His actions dictate who he is more than his words or personality. I was almost on the cusp of a three-and-a-half star review, but then the action spills over into the land of ridiculousness, and thus the three-star review. Characters who are shot several times not only don't die, but manage to correctly anticipate where another character will be next and drive there. They obviously read ahead in the script.
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