Baby Driver review: Edgar Wright screeches in with a high-octane, beat-matched action movie that is an ‘electric piece of genre cinema’.
Baby Driver review by Tom Fordy, June 2017.
For British movie geeks, a great Edgar Wright movie is a matter of pride. He is one of our own. A shame then, that it’s been a full seven years since his last great movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The final act of the Cornetto Trilogy, The World’s End, was an uneven misstep, and Ant-Man… well, wasn’t an Edgar Wright movie at all in the end.
Baby Driver review
But he goes full throttle with Baby Driver – an electric piece of genre cinema that speeds away (get used to those car metaphors, I’ve got a trunk-full) from the cosy Edgar Wright-ness that made him such a point of pride to us Brits in the first place.
Like Tarantino, there’s a feeling that Wright’s career is essentially a journey through his favourite genres, here stopping at ‘70s-style driver movie. The opening scene – and indeed, the entire conceit of the film – is the product of a mind well-versed in the language of cinema: getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort), who can only drive to the sound of banging tunes, putting pedal to the metal for a dynamite, perfectly choreographed chase sequence.
Related: The World’s End review
By all accounts, it’s an idea that Wright’s had three-point-turning around his brainbox since before Spaced and Shaun of the Dead – and it shows. This opening scene, like the scenes that follow it – a long take of Baby dancing his way to the coffee shop, then remixing assorted dictaphone recordings to make some sick beats (that’s what the kids call music, right?) – make for cool, kitsch-happy visuals, but it’s hard to escape the sense that Wright’s film had to do some serious reversing from these scenes to find its story.
Baby Driver review
There’s no substituting style over substance, of course. And it’s not until Baby opens his mouth for more than a few words that the film gets going. Elgort’s charisma carries the film further than any number of gimmicky scenes, while the story finds its heart in Baby’s romance with sweetheart waitress Debora (Lily James).
As ever for the good-guy movie criminal, Baby has one last job before he and Debora can race off down the highway and into the sunset – if a pile-up of bad luck and bad people don’t stop them from reaching their destination.
Yet the bad people are played by very good people indeed.
Kevin Spacey’s on great form as Doc, a bastard mobster version of American Beauty’s Lester Burnham. Jamie Foxx treads the line between hilarious and menacing as motor-mouth criminal Bats. In one scene, he has a priceless reaction to a Mike/Michael Myers joke that’s 20 years overdue. Later, his unhinged tendencies turn towards Debora – cue the nerve-jangling realisation of how much the film has staked in the Baby/Debora relationship.
But it’s John Hamm who steals it, living up to his name by shamelessly chewing the scenery as greasy-smooth bank robber Buddy, one half of a Bonnie and Clyde duo with Eiza González’s Darling.
Baby Driver review
What we’ve really come to see, of course, are badass car chases – and Edgar Wright reinvents his own hyper-caffeinated style by getting behind the wheel for some blistering action scenes (both on and off-road) and also shoots yet another pivotal action scene to a Queen song, which must be a point of serious personal accomplishment.
The first botched getaway is where the film kicks into second gear. By the time it gets to the final act – after one expertly set-up, head-splitting death scene – the gearstick’s snapped off and the brakes are totally knackered. If anything, it’s too much, one head-on collision too many perhaps, making the finale as exhausting as it is exciting.
Though tonally and stylistically different, you have to wonder if Drive has chipped some of the retro-cool shine off Baby Driver by arriving several years earlier. But for most of the journey it’s proof of what Edgar Wright can do when he’s not hampered by a super-villain-like studio, or whatever it was that made The World’s End such a shambles.
You could say he’s back in the driver’s seat. Ahem.
Baby Driver review by Tom Fordy.
Baby Driver review opens in UK cinemas on June 30th and US cinemas on June 28th, 2017.
