Baby Driver kicks summer movies into high gear
Yes, that catchy Simon & Garfunkel song “Baby Driver” comes into play during Edgar Wright’s zippy thrill ride of a movie; no, it will not easily leave your head (I’ve been humming it for a week); and yes, the movie’s just what you want a summer movie to be.
“Baby Driver” isn’t a musical (though I’m having a blast at my desk imagining it as one, particularly Jon Hamm singing a bad-boy ballad), but it’s a movie drenched in music. Its hero, Baby (the perfectly baby-faced Ansel Elgort, from “The Fault in Our Stars”), lives his life with a perpetual soundtrack playing through earbuds, to drown out chronic tinnitus. He’s a getaway driver by trade, and he drives like he’s conducting a very fast symphony. Behind the wheel, he disappears into his music; out of the car, even more so: fingers tapping imaginary piano keys, body pretzel-twisting to the rhythm. And the movie dances, too: It’s uncannily choreographed, with gestures and movements timed precisely to the soundtrack’s beat.
The story’s one you’ve heard many times: the old One Last Heist chorus. Baby, who has the misfortune of owing money to a crime boss known as Doc (Kevin Spacey), has developed a reputation as the best bank-robbery driver in Atlanta, and regularly ferries Doc’s crew — Buddy (Hamm),
Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) and Bats (Jamie Foxx) — on jobs. After finally paying off his debts, he thinks about a different kind of life with sweet diner waitress Debora (Lily James), whose smile is like a happy song. Doc, however, has another plan in mind, and gunfire rains down in the movie’s third act.
But you’re not watching “Baby Driver” for the story; you’re watching to see the relish with which the cast dives into Wright’s pool (just listen to what Spacey, in his usual robo-evil fashion, can do with the line “I just drew a whole goddamn map in chalk”) and the way the film marries sight and sound. A laundromat becomes Technicolor poetry with a row of dryers tumbling primary colours; a trio of lollipop-red sedans becomes a speeding shell game set to music; a camera whirls like a dance partner around Baby and Debora at a restaurant table, as she idly twirls a finger around the rim of a wineglass — producing an eerie hum. And, in a climactic chase scene late in the film, Baby abandons his car and just runs — you realize, breathless, that you think he can probably fly.
This movie has long been a passion project for Wright and you can see that dizzy, heady obsession in every frame. Plus there’s a wonderfully random celebrity cameo (watch for a character called The Butcher) and a perfect “Monsters Inc.” ref.
“Baby Driver” should steal a good chunk of this summer’s box office, and deservedly so.