Baby Driver
Go!
Bullets & Beats, Wheels & Feels.
Baby Driver is a movie about:
a) a woman who chauffeurs kittens between cuddling appointments,
b) a robot who offers life-coaching to toddlers,
c) a getaway driver, or
d) all of the above?
If you picked d), thank you. You’re wrong, and possibly certifiable, but I love the ambition of your imagination. With screeching tyres and sprayed gunfire, the answer is somewhat more conventional. From Edgar Wright, offbeat director of the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End), Baby Driver follows Drive (2011) and The Driver (1978) into the small but prestigious category of “Films About Getaway Drivers With a Title That Makes it Excruciatingly Obvious That The Film is About a Getaway Driver”. Thankfully, much like its predecessors, Baby Driver’s title is where its banality ends.
Set in Atlanta, ‘Baby’ (Ansel Elgort; Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars) is our eponymous getaway guru. In order to repay a long-standing debt, he is forced to work for slick, heist mastermind, Doc (Kevin Spacey, House of Cards). A young man of few words, Baby’s childhood car crash left him with emotional and physical scars, not least the tinnitus that hounds his hearing. To drown it out, he constantly listens to music; sound-tracking his entire life. With his debt finally repaid and ostensibly in early retirement, he falls for diner waitress, Debora (Lily James, Downton Abbey). Do they live happily ever after? Pah! In a crooked crew alongside Bats (Jamie Foxx, Django Unchained), Buddy (Jon Hamm, Mad Men) and Darling (Eiza Gonález, Almost Thirty), that ‘one big final score’ gets… complicated. What are the chances?! Do none of these criminals watch any movies?!
a) a woman who chauffeurs kittens between cuddling appointments,
b) a robot who offers life-coaching to toddlers,
c) a getaway driver, or
d) all of the above?
If you picked d), thank you. You’re wrong, and possibly certifiable, but I love the ambition of your imagination. With screeching tyres and sprayed gunfire, the answer is somewhat more conventional. From Edgar Wright, offbeat director of the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End), Baby Driver follows Drive (2011) and The Driver (1978) into the small but prestigious category of “Films About Getaway Drivers With a Title That Makes it Excruciatingly Obvious That The Film is About a Getaway Driver”. Thankfully, much like its predecessors, Baby Driver’s title is where its banality ends.
Set in Atlanta, ‘Baby’ (Ansel Elgort; Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars) is our eponymous getaway guru. In order to repay a long-standing debt, he is forced to work for slick, heist mastermind, Doc (Kevin Spacey, House of Cards). A young man of few words, Baby’s childhood car crash left him with emotional and physical scars, not least the tinnitus that hounds his hearing. To drown it out, he constantly listens to music; sound-tracking his entire life. With his debt finally repaid and ostensibly in early retirement, he falls for diner waitress, Debora (Lily James, Downton Abbey). Do they live happily ever after? Pah! In a crooked crew alongside Bats (Jamie Foxx, Django Unchained), Buddy (Jon Hamm, Mad Men) and Darling (Eiza Gonález, Almost Thirty), that ‘one big final score’ gets… complicated. What are the chances?! Do none of these criminals watch any movies?!
Whether they do or not, ensure that you watch Baby Driver. It is an absolute smasher.
Built around an electric, loin-tingling soundtrack, this movie is of the rare sort that exceeds the thrilling promise of its trailer. Baby is one of the coolest (white, male) characters in 21st century cinema. An unassuming badass, Elgort has somehow made the transition from actor-boy to icon-man in one film; from playing domesticated teens to becoming an oozy cool, untameable maverick with a heart of gold. Few characters achieve the smooth, self-assurance of Baby – a traditionalist's embodiment of American aspiration.
Aside from Elgort, the success of the film can largely be attributed to its writing and direction. A clever cocktail of Drive and Kick-Ass (2010), it throbs with an unapologetic rhythm from beginning to end. The story is constantly tuned to match the perfectly selected music: bullets clap in time with beats, engines rev over riffs, and conversations ricochet back and forth like seventies funk lyrics. When you hear Jamie Foxx coldly deliver lines (right before James Brown kicks in), like: “In this life, the moment you catch feelings is the moment you catch a bullet. Now pick up your purse and go get the coffee”, you’ll find yourself laughing, whooping, or jiving (or, all of the above). Moments like this could so easily have been cheesy, but when they drop, it is consistently exhilarating, much because Baby Driver never takes itself too seriously. The sharpened lines come as thick and as fast as the tunes, delivered with peppery precision by everyone who opens their mouth. Considering all the songs sampled, the lyrical lines and the tension between love and crime, Baby Driver is as close to being a thumping hip hop track as it is a movie.
Built around an electric, loin-tingling soundtrack, this movie is of the rare sort that exceeds the thrilling promise of its trailer. Baby is one of the coolest (white, male) characters in 21st century cinema. An unassuming badass, Elgort has somehow made the transition from actor-boy to icon-man in one film; from playing domesticated teens to becoming an oozy cool, untameable maverick with a heart of gold. Few characters achieve the smooth, self-assurance of Baby – a traditionalist's embodiment of American aspiration.
Aside from Elgort, the success of the film can largely be attributed to its writing and direction. A clever cocktail of Drive and Kick-Ass (2010), it throbs with an unapologetic rhythm from beginning to end. The story is constantly tuned to match the perfectly selected music: bullets clap in time with beats, engines rev over riffs, and conversations ricochet back and forth like seventies funk lyrics. When you hear Jamie Foxx coldly deliver lines (right before James Brown kicks in), like: “In this life, the moment you catch feelings is the moment you catch a bullet. Now pick up your purse and go get the coffee”, you’ll find yourself laughing, whooping, or jiving (or, all of the above). Moments like this could so easily have been cheesy, but when they drop, it is consistently exhilarating, much because Baby Driver never takes itself too seriously. The sharpened lines come as thick and as fast as the tunes, delivered with peppery precision by everyone who opens their mouth. Considering all the songs sampled, the lyrical lines and the tension between love and crime, Baby Driver is as close to being a thumping hip hop track as it is a movie.
It achieves all this while avoiding many of the usual Hollywood character tropes. Disabilities are portrayed as powers, early male trauma doesn’t result in emotional paralysis, women aren’t only victims, the bad guy is not a clownish oaf, being decent is seen as a strength. There are layers to the film that action movies normally avoid: positive messages of living life to your own tune, being good at things; finding balanced, honest love at its most romantic. Oh, and there are also some phenomenal chase scenes – mostly between cars, but the best one, surprisingly, on foot. Baby Driver has even made a 5k run entertaining, a feat previously believed to be scientifically impossible.
So go. Action, romance, comedy, drama and a perfect soundtrack: Baby Driver is the most freely enjoyable movie of the year so far.
So go. Action, romance, comedy, drama and a perfect soundtrack: Baby Driver is the most freely enjoyable movie of the year so far.
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