Baby Driver Review
While not every moviegoer out there goes along with the style of Edgar Wright, there is little doubt that he makes his films as entertaining as possible, even for those not taken with his choices. For his latest film, Baby Driver, there are many elements to the film that again fall in this category. From being an action heist film to a flat-out comedy, to a Tarantino movie, to a romance film, Baby Driver has a bit of everything to it, and is a very entertaining ride start to finish.
The film follows Baby, a getaway driver with tinnitus, who works for Doc, who commits several robberies in the Atlanta area. The two came in dealings after Baby stole several very expensive items from him, but he’s soon going to be even with Doc. One day after a job, Baby meets Debora, a waitress who works at Bo’s Diner, and he becomes infatuated with her. After seemingly completing his tasks and getting even with Doc, the day inevitably comes when Doc asks him to drive for him again on a new job, but now he knows Baby’s vulnerable love interest will be insurance in case he fails. But as this new job comes closer and closer, Baby plans to take himself and Debora out of Atlanta, but can he before it’s too late?
First off, I have to complement the script by Wright. The dialogue is endlessly quippy and as mentioned before, it definitely feels like a Tarantino film at times with how fast the delivery is, especially from Kevin Spacey’s Doc. Really there are some wonderful lines that will be remembered for some time. Of course one of the biggest elements about making a film like this work is do the action scenes work? The answer is yes. The car choreography is terrific. Also once the film gets into the romance angle, does that work? The answer is also yes. Lily James is a good foil for Ansel Elgort’s Baby, and the two look good together on screen and also deliver performances that match their characters perfectly. Their chemistry together is also very nice. It’s not going to go down as the best romance of all time or anything like that, but for a subplot in an action-comedy like this, you could do worse. While we’re on performances, I really enjoyed Jamie Foxx as Bats, the craziest and on-edge of Doc’s thugs that do the heisting before Baby drives them back. He’s the type of character that you love to hate. Also doing nice work as the thug characters are Jon Hamm in his best role since Mad Men (2007-2015) as Buddy and his squeeze and fellow thug Darling, played by Eiza Gonzalez. And here’s another thing: even though the thugs look different and have different styles, and their names are only mentioned a few times in the film, I remember their names, just as I remember Doc’s name. Debora and Baby’s names are used constantly, so those are given. Also great is CJ Jones as Baby’s foster father, who’s deaf. Their sign language communication not only serves as a nice break from more quippy dialogue spoken orally, but it’s a different angle to take things. Jones’ character, Joseph, has to feel the vibrations of the music on the speaker to get what Baby’s listening to. So yes, Baby is constantly listening to music throughout the film, and another key is is what he’s listening to great music? Hell, yes! A really awesome soundtrack that’s a good mix of rock n’ roll, love songs, and quieter songs 60’s to 80’s, which is what I like listening to. So yeah, I really liked the soundtrack.
As far as complaints go, I just have a few. First off, there are times when the sound mix isn’t very good. For example, the first time we meet Bats Baby’s doing a job, and while he’s on the job there’s a moment where he and his fellow thugs are communicating with each other as well as trying to help Baby when things aren’t going exactly to plan. The song that Baby’s listening to is so loud that it covered up the dialogue so that whole scene immediately lost my attention because I spent the whole time trying to review what was just said while trying to differentiate the dialogue from the music, which as I recall had a lot of lyrics to it. There’s maybe one or two more brief moments like that later in the film, but that one really hurt. Also there’s a moment toward the end where Baby is going up against an enemy that takes a while, and the person he’s fighting has already taken on gunshots, multiple hits from punches and hits from tools, yet they’re still fighting full force, and realism felt like it went out the window for the final fight sequence. One more thing: I felt the first half of the film had a nice pace going where we weren’t hanging around on a particular scene for too long. Then in the second half there are a few scenes that do feel at times a bit draggy. The dialogue makes up for it for the most part, but two scenes I won’t spoil here stuck out to me as a bit slow.
Really other than those smaller nitpicks, I don’t have much to complain about here. Edgar Wright has pulled off an action-comedy that excels at the action parts and doesn’t forget it’s a comedy. There’s also that nice romance between James and Elgort to keep you interested if you’re not into the action or comedy scenes, and the sense of fighting for these two so they can be together and away from the robberies is also nice. Overall I was very satisfied with the film, which, when it hits, is anything but a Slow Ride.
My rating: 9/10.
