Baby Driver

BABY DRIVER (Edgar Wright, 2017)

With the name Baby (Ansel Elgort), his lanky appearance, and omnipresent earbuds from one of his many loaded iPods, the protagonist of BABY DRIVER seems more like an aspiring indie rock star than the preferred wheelman for an Atlanta kingpin. He obsessively listens to music to tune out tinnitus from a childhood car accident that claimed his mother and father, but it also helps him focus when he’s driving fast and executing dangerous maneuvers. When he was younger Baby stole a car from the wrong man, so for years he’s been using his prodigious skills as a driver during heists to repay what he owes to Doc (Kevin Spacey).

After he makes things square for his past mistake, Doc isn’t inclined to let his best getaway man walk away and leave him hanging even though Baby wants out. It’s abundantly clear, though, that the wellbeing of Debora (Lily James), a diner waitress he’s started seeing, and his deaf surrogate father Joseph (CJ Jones) will be leveraged to pull Baby back for at least one more job. Ordinarily Doc doesn’t employ the same criminals twice, but he recalls bloodthirsty Bats (Jamie Foxx) and druggie lovebirds Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Darling (Eiza González) for a scheme to steal blank money orders from a post office. Baby really has no choice but to participate, although he hopes to be able to slip away with his dreamgirl before he’s pressed into action.

Writer-director Edgar Wright conceives BABY DRIVER as an action film set to a feature-length playlist. Strictly speaking, it’s not a musical, yet the wall-to-wall soundtrack and syncing of movement and sound with the rock and soul tracks give it the feel of one. The opening credits sequence with Baby grooving down the street to Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle” as he goes to pick up coffee for the crew is more reminiscent of LA LA LAND than a Michael Mann crime picture. Throughout the matching of music and action prompts a synergistic reaction for such a bracing and joyful demonstration of filmmaking craft.

The delightful choreography extends beyond the actors’ motions and gestures. The car chases are planned, shot, and edited to deliver the thrills of fast machines being handled in incredible ways. Contemporary action cinema’s editing styles tends to favor sensation over legibility. CGI has reduced the reliance on practical effects, some for greater capability and some surely for safety’s sake. Both approaches have led to forgetting or devaluing the simple pleasures of a good car chase. Wright starts BABY DRIVER with a doozy that includes a clever reshuffling of similar cars to throw the authorities off the trail of the fleeing criminals. He doesn’t top this car chase, but the others in the film are plenty exciting as they’re stoked by pulse-pounding songs.

The screenplay, the first credited solely to him since his low-budget debut A FISTFUL OF FINGERS, is loaded with witty dialogue versed in pop culture. An argument over the purchase of the wrong Halloween mask exemplifies the cleverness and speed in Wright’s writing. Spacey is particularly suited for the rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of the verbal humor and gets probably the biggest laugh when expressing his weariness of Baby quoting one film. BABY DRIVER doesn’t have the depth of THE WORLD’S END, Wright’s best film, but like all of his movies it bubbles with a sense of fun. The energy and assuredness in his direction signals to strap in and enjoy the ride.

Grade: A-