Baby Driver

Baby Driver takes a familiar crime thriller concept, but does something entirely new with it, creating a modern masterpiece that balances humour, tension and a rockin’ soundtrack to become one of the most original – and enjoyable – films of recent years.

Premise:  Talented driver “Baby” (Ansel Elgort) is forced to work for criminal kingpin “Doc” (Kevin Spacey) as the wheelman for various bank robbery crews.  But as Baby prepares for his final job for Doc, he meets diner waitress Debora (Lily James) and begins to see a chance for a new life outside of crime – but the life may not be done with him yet.

Review:

On paper at least, Baby Driver sounds like any one of a number of films where there’s a main character who’s fallen into a life of crime despite being a fundamentally good person underneath, and who falls in love with someone while preparing for “one last job”.  But in Edgar Wright’s hands, that concept is merely used as the basis for building something that’s genuinely unlike any film I’ve seen before.

Baby Driver may be Edgar Wright’s fifth film as a director, but it’s also the first he’s written on his own, and it has a very different tone and feel from the comedy trilogy he wrote with Simon Pegg (namely Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End).  While Baby Driver has a lot of humour, it’s fundamentally still a crime thriller rather than an action/comedy, and there are moments of genuine tension and jeopardy along the way.  In particular, Baby himself also conveys a real sense of uneasy at the level of violence some of his associates are prepared to inflict – but as one such associate, Griff (Jon Bernthal), points out to him, Baby doesn’t get to pretend that he’s not one of them just because he’s only the driver.

“…proper, old school stunt driving at its best…”

And speaking of the driving – well, this is proper, old school stunt driving at its best.  I may have a soft spot for the Fast & Furious franchise, but now that that series has escalated to pitting supercars against nuclear submarines on a glacier in Russia, it’s fair to say it’s pretty much lost all sense of realism in its stunt driving.  Baby Driver, on the other hand, shows off just what you can do with fairly normal cars if you have the right skills, and there’s a genuine joy and thrill in seeing a car spin and weave its way through speeding traffic when you know it’s all being done for real.

But it’s the decision to marry the excitement of the stunt driving with a toe-tapping classic rock soundtrack that is Edgar Wright’s real stroke of genius.  Anyone who’s ever put the pedal to the metal on a sunny day with some classic tunes blasting on the radio will know that fast cars and air guitars go together like burgers and fries, and Baby Driver takes that to a whole new level.  Rather than playing songs purely for the audience’s benefit, in Baby Driver the music is actually played by the characters in the film itself.

“...one of the most original and joyous cinematic experiences of the year…”

This is all explained by Baby’s backstory, and the fact that he constantly listens to music on his iPod to drown out the tinnitus he’s suffered ever since he was involved in a childhood car accident.  Baby’s ever-present iPod provides a constant stream of background music – so that a simply walk down the street to get coffee becomes an almost surreal one-man musical, while Baby’s getaway drives are all scored to his specially selected playlists.  Even the gunfights are choreographed to the soundtrack, and the result is simply one of the most original and joyous cinematic experiences of the year.

The fact that Baby constantly wears his iPod earbuds (and omnipresent shades) also serves as a nice metaphor for the emotional barriers that he’s had to erect around himself.  Forced into this life of crime, he clearly doesn’t want to genuinely become a part of it, meaning he never truly allows any of himself to show around his underworld associates.  Only when Baby is at home caring for his elderly, deaf foster father does he ever let his guard down.  That is until he meets Debora (Lily James), who shares his desire to escape their hometown and hit the open road, and who clearly on some level reminds Baby of his dead mother (although not in a creepy way).

“…the film’s ace in the hole is its supporting cast…”

Ansel Elgort and Lily James are great as the young star-crossed lovers, but the film’s ace in the hole is the strength of its supporting cast.  Kevin Spacey gives an interestingly contradictory performance as the criminal kingpin “Doc”, who at times is downright scary, but at other times can almost be borderline paternalistic towards Baby.  Jamie Foxx brings a real sense of unpredictability as “Bats”, a bank robber who’s only too happy to shoot first and ask questions later (or not at all), while Jon Hamm and Eiza González are fantastic as “Buddy” and “Darling”, the Bonnie & Clyde (or Mickey & Mallory) of the crew.

I started off by saying that Baby Driver is a genuine crime thriller rather than an action comedy – but I also want to make it clear that the film’s still brimming with humour.  What Edgar Wright does is expertly balance the tone of the film, so that the humour injects fun moments of levity that complement the tension and the action, rather than undercut it.  But the film is still packed with laugh out loud moments, whether it’s Baby insisting he needs to restart the song on his iPod because the bank robbery didn’t begin on cue, or the hilarious misunderstanding over the disguises to be worn on a particular bank job.

“…may very well be my favourite original film of the year…”

All in all, it’s really hard to find fault with this film, and as much as I love a lot of the larger blockbuster franchises, it’s fantastic to see that a creative and inventive non-sequel film like this can still get made today.  When all’s said and done, it may not be my favourite film of 2017, but it may very well be my favourite original film of the year.