Movie Review: Baby Driver
Edgar Wright finally makes a ‘real movie’
Baby Driver is as stylized and kinetic as one would expect from writer/director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim), but not entirely in line with his prior work. Wright is mainly known for his sharp genre parodies that use their over-the-top premises to tackle specific subject matter. In Shaun of the Dead, for example, the zombie apocalypse helps create a metaphor about a toxic, co-dependent relationship. Baby Driver, for all the Edgar Wright-isms in the visual display, is just a film about a getaway driver trying to leave “the life” behind. There’s no deeper metaphor here and the commentary on human behavior rarely rises above cliche.
At least it’s a damn good crime film though!
The film lacks depth, but it’s overflowing with a breadth of creativity. The titular character Baby has a host of quirks that actually define the experience of the film. Due to a bad case of tinnitus, Baby must constantly listen to music. As as result, the film’s many car chases are synced to a variety of classic tunes. But the musical accompaniment doesn’t stop at the action scenes— it’s the through-line for the movie. We have heist planning, romantic meet-cutes, father/son bonding, dramatic monologues, etc. all enhanced by the custom soundtrack. Similarly, Wright packs the frame with a Technicolor color palette and gaudy costumes to sell the larger than life fantasy. Yeah, this is basically La La Land meets Drive.
Ansel Elgort anchors the film in a sturdy, subtle performance. It’s not hard to buy Elgort as a guy named Baby given that he’s a bit of a baby-faced actor in reality. Luckily, he’s learned how to subvert his doughy looks with a well-delivered scowl and his ever present shades (one of the film’s best gags revolves around Baby’s well-stocked wardrobe of sunglasses). Wright occasionally draws a compelling contrast from Baby’s wannabe tough guy exterior and his private moments of youthful joy. The film’s most out-of-box and slyly successful scene depicts Baby writing his own music instead of digging up some famous tune. For a second, this film about music gets deliriously meta, showing the audience just how far one can marry their lives to music if they try hard enough.
Outside of Elgort’s straight man, we have a host of colorful side characters. Jon Hamm is notably against type, but personally, I preferred Jamie Foxx as the aptly named Bats. Why Bats? He’s crazy. It’s here that Wright strains the remaining credulity to the breaking point. The cohort is so insane that it’s entirely illogical they would work together. No banks would ever get robbed when the crew is more interested in self destructive behavior.
Unfortunately, Wright builds the second half of the film around Baby’s demented teammates instead of a more external conflict. Early moments in the film build up Kevin Spacey’s crime boss as the antagonist to confront. There are also hints of an undercover cop or a double cross in the mix. Ultimately, none of these plot threads comes to fruition. Instead, Wright goes for a full-on Quentin Tarantino homage, giving us several scenes of tense, twisty dialogue between the mad bank robbers. Individually, these scenes are excellent. I’d wager that Wright does better than the most of the bloviating found in the Hateful Eight. On the whole, however, I’m given the impression that Wright sacrificed structural cohesion to impart unsatisfying unpredictability into the narrative. We know that Baby is going to backed into a corner (sorry?), that his damsel will be in distress, and that he’s going to have to get his hands dirty to get out. For the first time, Wright is attempting to faithfully recreate genre tropes rather than subvert them, which makes his stumbles in narrative logic somewhat surprising.
As with every other flaw here, it’s hard to register more than mild distaste when the package is so well delivered. For example, I have hardly anything to say concerning the film’s shallow central romance. Lily James takes the tiresome role and knocks it out the park. It’s one genre element that Wright recreates without a personal flair, which actually grounds the film even if it’s banally sexist.
The more I turn over Baby Driver in my head, the more I unearth a message on personal fantasy and the escape from grief. Behind the MGM musical flair and the highly choreographed fight scenes lies a bit of melancholy. Without spoiling the goods, the last five minutes or so hints at a darker vision of the film, or at least a more ambiguous one. It’s hard though to distinguish a potentially unreliable narrator from Wright’s own authorial voice. And that is part of what makes Baby Driver exciting to watch. We haven’t seen that many Edgar Wright movies without an obvious tongue-in-cheek agenda. So let’s give Baby Driver another spin and see what we’re missing. I certainly don’t mind that task.
