"And Once Upon a Pair of Wheels..."
Writer/director Edgar Wright's new film is the car chase and crime musical you didn't know you wanted. Baby Driver is the story of a young getaway driver named Baby (Ansel Elgort) whose skills behind the wheel are unmatched. He drives to pay off a longstanding debt to crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey), and is pulled deeper into the world of heists even as he tries to turn over a new leaf and find love. If you've seen any of Edgar Wright's other films, like Hot Fuzz or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, you know he's a filmmaker who can match his immense style with equal substance, and his work on Baby Driver is no different. It's simply a great time at the movies.
From the acceleration of a car to the impact of a bullet, every bit of action is choreographed to a carefully curated soundtrack. The characters don't sing, and—save for a creative opening title sequence—there's no dancing, but Baby Driver is absolutely a musical. Just as George Lucas wrote American Graffiti while listening to the songs that would ultimately fill out its soundtrack, Wright has selected tracks for his film that don't just work as underscore, but as important parts of the story. Baby has tinnitus, and to drown it out, he listens to music on a myriad of iPods. Some songs, like Button Down Brass' "Tequila," work as a poppy track to stage action to, while Baby shares T. Rex's "Debora" with his love interest of the same name.
The action in Baby Driver is as meticulously crafted as the soundtrack. The opening car chase is slick and shows off Baby's reflexes and intelligence as a getaway driver, and a third act foot chase is perhaps the film's greatest set piece as it takes the audience through multiple locations in the time of one pulse-quickening song. Best of all, nearly all of the action in Baby Driver is done practically. I love great visual effects when they add to the narrative, but the story here is enhanced when the near-crashes and 180˚ turns are real.
As he did on previous films, Wright has written a very funny script, and he's recruited an excellent cast to bring his oddball criminals to life. Jon Bernthal, Flea, Lanny Joon, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzáles, and Jamie Foxx all play distinct members of various heist crews Baby is tasked with driving, and they each manage to play the comedy in their parts without ever sacrificing a sense of danger. Wright threads a needle by making his criminals fun to watch yet too scary to want to meet in real life. Spacey's Doc is the epitome of this, generating hilarious quips that are laced with menace.
Elgort is given the unenviable task of playing a character who is somewhat of a blank slate. Wright has crafted Baby around his music, so what charm he has isn't constantly on display, not to mention that he's a very young man in a world of grizzled thieves. Much of the weight of the crimes committed is apparent when Baby witnesses real violence at the hands of the people he has to chauffeur, and Elgort does a great job playing tainted innocence in such a dirty line of work. Lily James, playing Debora, similarly embodies a plainer, more innocent character than the rest of the supporting cast, but she has her own kind of magnetic charm that makes her a winning presence, even in small bursts.
Like Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright is a filmmaker who knows how to take his fervent fandom and use it to craft original movies. He's cited the works of Walter Hill, specifically The Driver, as a major influence on Baby Driver, but the film never feels like a hodgepodge of someone else's techniques. From the opening chase scene to the closing credits, Wright's fingerprints are on every single frame, and yet the film never feels over controlled. The timed-to-music sequences never feel forced and the story flows without any major speed bumps. Everything about Baby Driver clicks into place, and with so many moving pieces, it's quite the filmmaking feat.