‘Baby Driver’ is stylishly good fun
With a cool cast, wild car chases, and an eclectic soundtrack, Edgar Wright’s latest is a bit slicker than the average heist movie
Since its premiere at SXSW in the spring, there’s been a lot of hype around Edgar Wright’s latest film, Baby Driver. The trailer alone is fun to watch, so the buzz is no surprise. Well, Baby Driver absolutely does not disappoint. It’s a fresh and fun heist movie that’s stylishly executed with frantic chase scenes and long tracking shots set to an eclectic retro soundtrack. Leaning heavily on its collection of pop music to shift smoothly from lighter moments to tenser ones (or in many cases, subverting them), Baby Driver manages to be both a thriller with stakes that’s also lighthearted and funny. While the focus of the movie is on reckless car chases and ridiculous shoot outs paced rhythmically to a carefully curated soundtrack, this cast shines. Ansel Elgort is both quirky and charming in the otherwise understated title role of Baby. Meanwhile, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Bernthal, and Flea all get to have fun playing a group of charismatic psychopaths employed by Kevin Spacey.
Baby Driver revolves around a young getaway driver named Baby who’s pressured into working for an Atlanta crime boss (Kevin Spacey) to pay off a debt. After being in a car accident as a child, Baby has tinnitus, and uses music to block out the ringing and stay focused. As such, he’s rarely without his earbuds in, listening to a diverse range of pop, rock, jazz, funk, and soul from various eras.
Baby’s iPod ultimately serves as the score and soundtrack; the film beats along to whatever tunes Baby cues up to set the mood and energy of any given moment. Each scene has a very specific rhythm, each song choice a purposeful decision. There’s a mix of cool jazz for the tenser moments from artists like Dave Brubeck, David McCallum, and Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers; with soulful pop from The Commodores, Brenda Holloway, and Beck for the more romantic moments between Elgort and his love interest, Debora (Lily James); and a number of big rock anthems from Queen, Focus, and Golden Earring setting the pace for the frenetic chase scenes. There’s probably a version of this movie where such an extensively curated soundtrack borders on being clunky overkill, but with Baby Driver, Wright manages to ensure the soundtrack always feels like a perfectly organic part of the movie, as well as an intrinsic extension of Baby’s character.
Much like the soundtrack, Ansel Elgort shifts effortlessly between scenes that alternatively call on him to be either funny, pensive, frantic, polite, or just plain cool. He has a casual confidence in how he moves, whether he’s driving with three cop cars in pursuit or dancing his way down the street. Music informs Baby’s mood and character — how he expresses himself as well as how he relates and communicates with others. When he meets Debora, music is how he connects with her. He shares a similar moment with Hamm’s character who seems to understand him better than the other criminals in the crew.
Hamm, Foxx, and Gonzalez all put forth excellent performances in supporting roles as a crew of bank robbers, which they all manage to be both comical and terrifying in unique ways. Hamm in particular stands out; after a string of small film and TV appearances since wrapping up his run as the stoic-but-complicated Don Draper on Mad Men, it’s fun to see him step into a role where he gets to really unhinge. Foxx, too, is fun to watch in what feels like a more earnest approach to his brief role in the Horrible Bosses movies. Lastly, Lily James has an innocent charm as Debora, a sweet Southern waitress who believably has quick chemistry with Baby.
Edgar Wright has always been a wildly creative and funny writer and director. Although his films in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End) could easily be considered parodies of genre films, they’ve always been a bit too clever for that, they’ve always been something more. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, too, was not just a comic adaptation; it was weird, and visually creative, and kind of ridiculous, but all in an ultimately stylish way that felt both retro and modern.
With Baby Driver, Edgar Wright took something not so new — a classic heist — and pumped it full of energy with a colorful cast of characters and a very carefully selected and purposefully used soundtrack. He created a lead character that probably didn’t have to be as nuanced and idiosyncratic and funny as Baby (granted, Elgort gets sooo much credit for bringing the role to life). Baby Driver is a little too clever and a little too stylish to be “just another heist movie,” and that’s what works so well. It’s an Edgar Wright movie. And if Baby Driver is any indication of where he’s going post-Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, well, there’s likely a lot of stylishly good fun to look forward to.
