BABY DRIVER Review: Ice Cold, Baby

I think that virtually every review of Edgar Wright’s car chase/musical/romance extravaganza touches on it at some point, but it really must be said that the opening five or so minutes of Baby Driver are probably the best (certainly the coolest) opening minutes to a film that you’ll see this year. This is not a film that messes around, which is pretty relieving given how long it has been since Wright’s last feature film, The World’s End. There’s a lot to marvel at over the course of Baby Driver (most of it coming from Wright’s staggering technical abilities), that even a slightly chilly emotional core can’t derail it from becoming one of this Summer’s biggest talking points and a film you should absolutely see once, as big and as loud as possible.

Baby Driver opens with the titular and bizarrely named Baby at the start of what is supposed to be his penultimate heist as the getaway driver for a team of criminals. As the opening of the film progresses, we learn that Baby has been into driving since he was able to see over the steering wheel and, as a result, is probably the best driver in Atlanta (where the film is set). The acquirement of such enormous brass cajones put him on the radar of Kevin Spacy's Doc - a criminal mastermind who employs Baby as his driver for bank heists and the like. After the film's opening heist, Baby only has one more job to do before Doc will consider them 'straight'.

You get the impression that if it weren’t for Lily James’ Debora walking into his life at just the right moment, Baby might be a bit more blasé about leaving Doc’s employment – that the buzz of driving, which Jon Hamm’s character calls him out for later in the movie, is probably enough to push his concerns of criminality and mortality just far enough to the side so as to enter his blind spot. But Debora does walk into his life, opening Baby’s eyes just enough to push his other concerns back into his field-of-view. He’s happy to leave his job and spend his life with Debora – that is, until Doc returns with the unsurprising message that his work isn’t finished after all and that it may only be beginning.

Cue Baby’s thinly sketched but purely motivated attempt to exit the crime world as quickly and as effectively as possible. It’s never clear if he knows how exactly he’s going to get out, but he’s definitely going to try.

Baby Driver’s story is disarmingly simple when contrasted against Edgar Wright’s previous movies. There’s a dramatic reduction in the amount of moving parts at play and little of the out and out world-building that littered a film such as Scott Pilgrim*. Part of that is just the focus of the material. Wright’s previously acclaimed comedy-chops are still on display throughout Baby Driver (there’s one cutaway during a car chase to the rear-view display monitor in the car that wouldn’t be out of place in Hot Fuzz) but Baby Driver isn’t a comedy – it’s a car chase/romance film that commits to the bit pretty much entirely. But, with a twist.

As you might have heard by now, Baby Driver has a pretty large (read: stratospheric) emphasis on music, partly thematic, but most noticeably in the way that Wright choreographs the action scenes so as to fit as seamlessly with the music as possible**. When I first heard this, I envisioned that the whole film was going to play out in total synchronised rhythm, with every bang, click and skid steamrolling its way into the belly of the soundtrack. The end result isn’t quite as explicit as that idea, though there are plenty of extremely satisfying moments that fit it, from gunshot blasts turning into percussion, or the way that Kevin Spacy puts down his money down in the most casually rhythmic way possible. A lot of the film is tied just as much to the feel of the tracks as it is to the rhythm of them, which sort of means that, for a lot of the film, the music element doesn’t command all of your attention – something that is probably a negative for those expecting the film to be like a feature length version of the Bohemian Rhapsody trailer for Suicide Squad, but really works in its favour when you give it a second watch. It’s a really great way to execute this kind of vision, with film becoming music in a way that, no matter how well described, is better experienced by checking out the film in its entirety. Failing that, the earlier linked first five minutes of the film give you a good idea of what you’re in for***.

It’s pretty much impossible to really discuss Baby Driver without talking about the kind of craft that goes into making it, which I feel is both totally justified and yet sort of misses the big picture at the same time. We can go on for ever about how utterly precise it is, the film’s Oscar-worthy editing (it’s pretty disgraceful how Wright gets routinely ignored by the academy on this front) or the impeccable sense of cinematic geography on display in the action scenes, but unless you’re a film nerd like me, that might all sound a little staid – somewhat akin to admiring a painting without really getting much else out of the experience. It’s important, then, to emphasise just how stunningly utilised Wright’s cinematic bag of tricks are. This isn’t craft on the level of Birdman where it all sounds impressive and film nerdy but doesn’t add a whole lot to the actual film – Wright has such an acute sense of what the power of cinema can do for a moment that the whole film just fires off into the distance right from the word go. He’s the sort of director that can take the oft-jerked off to long take and actually use it to good effect, or know exactly how to pace and push his action beats for maximum tension and effect. In fact, all the talk of action misses out on the downright Breaking Bad-esque tension that exudes from the film’s third quarter, during Baby and the gang’s visit to Bo's diner. Wright knows film, not just technically, but how and when to use it properly.

Honestly, if there’s a downside to all this, it’s that things feel almost a little too 'normal' in contrast to his other films such as Hot Fuzz. As I mentioned earlier, Wright’s earlier work consists largely of comedies, but his toolset is largely the same as it is here. As a result, the cinematic language that adds a whole other perspective to his earlier work, is instead perfectly at home in this one. In fact, if anything, it’s almost slightly dialled down, with a lot of the trademark editing techniques of the Cornetto trilogy less emphasised than they were before (a change in technique that was already marginally apparent in The World’s End). Now I’m not trying to corner Wright or his style purely down into his use of whip-pans or ‘load-up’ editing sequences (which would be a pretty reductive way to view his work), but thought I should still mention the effect that all this has on the film.

If car chases and crime are one half of the story, then romance is the other half, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s the film’s core. Baby and Debora’s relationship is the film’s main thrust and one which I kind of go both ways on. On the one hand, the film is clearly doing something right with these characters, otherwise I wouldn’t be hoping throughout the whole thing that nothing bad happens to them. It’s a combination of great pacing/structure and acting. Ansel Egort does well in what I can imagine is an incredibly tricky role to really nail (Baby is both a sympathetic character, yet with the occasional moment during the film’s first half in particular that makes you wonder if he’s a bit of a douchenozzle), whilst Lily James is incredibly likeable in what is a pretty thankless role. She doesn’t really have a lot to actually do and she occasionally gets lines about ‘music and the road and a car I can’t afford’ that don’t sound like they would actually be spoken by a normal un-stoned human, but she really locks into the character’s charm and it works wonders for moments such as the earlier-mentioned diner scene in which you’re praying that Jamie Foxx’ character won’t decide to suddenly turn on her.

On the other hand, I think their relationship locks into Baby Driver’s most niggling issue – that each time I have left the cinema, I was happy, but I was also left feeling a little cold. The relationships in the film are the sort that totally work in the moment but don’t linger much afterward. A second watch both endears me slightly more to their story, whilst also just helping to make this element all the clearer. Perhaps this is all part of being ‘this Summer’s coolest movie’ but it can’t help but feel slightly emotionally hollow when compared to his Pegg co-written projects or even Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

At the same time, it really only registers as a dent in an otherwise impeccable machine. A rewatch only confirms how fun the film is, with the last half an hour in particular firing off into something really blistering, given that I’ve had time to properly absorb the movie’s direction, which is actually pretty unexpected when you view it for the first time.

I’ve not even touched on the terrific supporting cast, from Kevin Spacy’s seemingly cold, unbreakable father-figure, Doc to Jamie Foxx’ turn as the unstable piece of shit, Bats. And that’s still missing out CJ Jones’ kindly foster parent or Jon Hamm’s hypnotic, horrific, slightly ludicruous turn as Buddy. I may grumble, but Baby Driver is really, really good. A magnificent ride/song of a movie that is so incredibly easy to like, even if it’s slightly harder to love.

★★★★

Easy like Sunday morning, this one.

*The film dances around the idea, such as with the 'Octane' coffee shop and Bo's diner, but doesn't quite do a lot with them. It's not really interested in it.

**This idea is based on a music video Edgar Wright directed for ‘Blue Song’ by Mint Royale. It appears ever so briefly in Baby Driver as an Easter egg.

***If you’re looking for a recommendation, or wondering if this film is for you, hopefully that clip cleared things up.

#edgarwright #babydriver #anselelgort #lilyjames #2017