Baby Driver Shifts A New Subgenre into High Gear
by Jeffrey Martin
If you go to the theaters this weekend and want to peel out of the parking lot post screening, then you must have seen the chase movie of the year, Baby Driver.
Set in the seedy side of Atlanta, Kevin Spacey is a crime boss that never works with the same crew twice to rob banks, except for Baby (Ansel Elgort), his go-to getaway driver for every heist. The hook is one of the many reasons this film is taking off: Baby has tinnitus and he drowns out the ringing in his ears with incredible playlists that rev him up for the getaway and lay down the soundtrack for the entire wild ride.
Baby Driver sets your heart racing from the word go and doesn’t let off the gas until the credits roll.
Baby Driver, in a word, is fun! It stands out from all the other movies out there right now because for once crime pays off in entertainment without brainless blockbusterism. That’s because the real star of the film is the director, Edgar Wright. Wright has a singular vision: The script is a film’s foundation, but the the director frames the action, the actors’ performances and all the other facets of the film that tell us a bit more about the story. The ancient axiom is to “show, not tell,” and my god, Wright puts on a show.
Out of an estimated budget of $40,000,000, I’d love to know how much went to music. There are some known hits but there are many unknown gems in Baby Driver’s soundtrack. If you recognize more than 5 songs, you’ve earned the title of The Collective’s Musical Savant. The music here isn’t just a pleasure, but underscores everything going on in Baby’s world.
And while music is always front and center in any movie, sound is something we generally take for granted in movies. But in Baby Driver, when you catch a random police siren wailing in the distance, you can’t help but viscerally feel the danger for the crew getting caught up with the law again. That’s because of Wright’s careful direction, building story so that you become part of it. It shows that the age of directors as auteurs isn’t over. If anything, it’s shifting into high gear with this picture.
As far as the story itself, it sounds familiar: A golden-hearted criminal supports his loved one(s) with his capers and finally wants to get out of the game, but has one last job to do. We’ve seen this before, but as a good friend once told said, “With film, it’s not in the ‘what,’ but in the ‘how.’” Despite the charming yet ominous boss (which reminds us why Hollywood needs character actors like Kevin Spacey), the flashbacks to a sweet mother, a hair-triggered nemesis that might snap at any moment and so on, you truly have never seen a getaway quite like this. Baby Driver sets your heart racing from the word go and doesn’t let off the gas until the credits roll.
Jeffrey Martin is The Collective’s cinema critic and the creator of The Pick Ups, a podcast about film you can catch right here on The Collective. You can follow him on Twitter at @jeffthemartin.
