Edgar Wright is unfairly talented: no director should be this good at action and comedy and romance and whichever other genre he touches. Wright hoards a wealth of surplus brilliance that, in a just world, would be evenly parceled out amongst Hollywood. Baby Driver is perhaps his most irresistible concoction yet – a breakneck heist film with big laughs, breathtaking car chases, and a reverential, infectious love of music.
Let’s start with the music. The titular Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a getaway driver, the archetypical criminal with a Heart of Gold who’s In Too Deep and Can’t Get Out. But, fortunately, this well-traversed trope is only a relatively blank canvas on which Wright makes plenty of crazy flourishes, like packing the film with wall-to-wall music. See, Baby has tinnitus and listens to music 24/7 to keep him from hearing a buzzing sound (as well as other unpleasantries, like gun shots and sirens). Baby Driver, perhaps the world’s first heist musical, milks this gimmick for all its worth. Wright employs dizzying unbroken tracking shots set to songs playing from Baby’s iPod, synchs the tunes up with robberies and car chases, and even uses music as a signifier over which characters bond and reveal themselves. Compared to Baby Driver, most other films might as well come from the silent era.
Baby Driver boasts an impressive cast, and, although they are starring in an action comedy that is essentially a high-end mash-up of Speed and The Blues Brothers, many are doing the finest work of their careers. Ansel Elgort and Lily James are both likable as would-be lovers, but they are surrounded by a wonderful crew of intimidating heavies, manic thugs, and loco bad girls. Jamie Foxx, playing an unhinged madman named Bats, has never been better – he gives Baby Driver, a movie brimming with fun and humor, a menacing dark streak. Jon Hamm makes the most of his most memorable film role yet (even despite an unfortunate alt-right haircut) and Eiza Gonzalez delivers as his equally wild girlfriend. Even Kevin Spacey, playing a criminal mastermind who looks more like a DII college basketball coach, ups his game. His performance is (relatively) understated, effective without veering into the Kevin Spacey imitation he’s done in House of Cards and recent movies.
Wright gets the little things right: the car chases appear to be mostly practical, avoiding the eye-rolling computer-aided insanity of most action blockbusters. There are wonderful throwaway one-liners, tearful goodbyes, and even the most minor characters are well-defined and memorable. Baby Driver’s ending is a bit disappointing, mostly because the rest of the film is so inventive and inarguably excellent that you want it to make up a new ending to an old story. As the world closes in on Baby and his colorful compatriots, the scope of the film shrinks to a rather conventional action movie battle. It’s still handled with expert craftsmanship, but it lacks the rest of Baby Driver’s flair. Nonetheless, this is populist filmmaking at its finest, and one of the best films of 2017.
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