Writer/director Edgar Wright (SHAUN OF THE DEAD) delivers the kind of summer movie you hope for – action-packed, light, with a bit of humor – in BABY DRIVER. Car chases and a non-stop jukebox music soundtrack help drive this highly entertaining flick, which shares its title with a Simon and Garfunkel song. This delightful summer escape has the extra bonus on not being a sequel, prequel, re-make or re-boot, just an original story.
Ansel Elgort (THE FAULT IN OUR STARS) plays Baby, a get-away driver with ever-present earbuds and mad driving skills to a constant soundtrack. His boss Doc (Kevin Spacey, ironically smirking as usual) pairs Baby with a series of criminal teams for bank robberies.
Baby suffers from tinnitus as a result of a childhood car accident that killed his parents, which he copes with by constantly listening to music recorded on an iPod or even old cassettes. While he looks lost in music, he is sharp as can be and takes in every detail. Beside his own soundtracks, he also makes his own audio-mix songs in the small apartment he shares with Joseph (CJ Jones), an older deaf man in a wheelchair who raised the orphaned kid.
When Baby meets pretty waitress Debora (Lily James, who played Rose on BBC’s Downton Abbey), they bond over music and Baby starts to re-think his career in crime. But Doc has a new kind of heist in the works, bringing Baby together with a loose-cannon named Bats (Jamie Foxx) and criminal couple Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez).
British writer/director Edgar Wright has built a reputation, among film buffs at least, for successfully combing comedy and action. He paired with co-writer/actor Simon Pegg for the comedy/horror hit SHAUN OF THE DEAD, followed by HOT FUZZ and THE WORLD’S END, a series known as the Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy for a favorite British frozen treat that appears in all three movies. In SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, Wright mixed video games and fantasy for the plot. In BABY DRIVER, the mix is music and car chases.
It is a combination that really works for action entertainment, the kind of light, escapist film audiences often seek in the heat of summer. By adding a good dose of humor and a winning cast, BABY DRIVER fills that popcorn-munching bill in satisfying, and fun, style.
Ansel Elgort and Lilly James are perfect as the young couple. Elgort has enough acting chops to carry the lead role, as well as youth and appeal needed. Lily James is winning as Debora, and we are as take as Baby is by her sweetness. The supporting cast are as much fun as the romantic pair. Jamie Foxx gets to play a really nutty, threatening character, Bats, who is indeed batty as well as highly dangerous. Playing the wildly unpredictable Bats lets Foxx show off some acting skills he does always get to use. Jon Hamm matches him scene for scene, playing an intriguing suave criminal, as if Don Draper stepped out of TV’s “Mad Men” and turned to a life of crime, with Gonzalez’s Darling playing the perfect mix of eye-candy and action teammate. Kevin Spacey does his usual but highly effective turn as the ironic, sardonic Doc, who has a fondness for his gifted young driver.
There is not much to criticize in this light summer distraction. Still, those who loved Wright’s horror and science fiction movies won’t find those themes in BABY DRIVER, which instead draws on the car chase action film genre. Those who really loved SCOTT PILGRIM might not find this different direction from Wright to their tastes.
But really, what could be more summer time than car chase movies? If car chase movies, set to a killer soundtrack, get your motor running. head out the the cinema for this one. It has the goods for pulse-elevating chase footage. Add in a terrifically energetic soundtrack with songs like…plus crazy, charismatic characters thanks to the strong supporting cast ,and a good dose of humor and romance, and it adds up to a summer movie sweet spot. Those looking for summertime escape that does not involve comic books, robots or continues an earlier movie will get their action movie fix with the BABY DRIVER’s joy ride.
© Cate Marquis
