FILM OF THE WEEK
Baby Driver Cert: 15A; Now showing
Ever since a childhood car accident that claimed the lives of his parents, Baby (Ansel Elgort) must constantly play music on his headphones to keep his tinnitus at bay. The songs are a soundtrack to this protagonist’s life that he uses as a timing rhythm for everything he does. Thus, there is rarely any let-up in Edgar Wright’s super-slick heist thriller from pumped-up song numbers that are tackily synced in with bullet-fire, engine revs, even the preparation of a light snack in the kitchen. Are we watching a movie or a sequence of music videos, you wonder.
Immediately, this becomes tiresome and redundant. When Baby walks past graffiti and logos that sneakily echo the lyrics of the tune playing, you want to scream at how gimmicky and trite it is.
There is another inescapable issue with Baby Driver — Baby himself. As the gifted driver for a sophisticated bank-job team (Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm and Eiza Gonzalez) led by Doc (Kevin Spacey), he regularly comes across as invincible and carefree, despite his tender years and the physical and mental scarring of his orphaning. It’s implied that a better life awaits him should things work out between him and Lily James’s roadside-diner waitress but life seems OK as is. In a nutshell, there is not enough of a sense of vulnerability or struggle to Baby, meaning we don’t really care that much what ultimately happens to him either way. This is a cardinal sin in the writing of any protagonist.
Wright is more concerned with cartoonish, linear hijinks, an achingly cool soundtrack and one or two admittedly nifty car-chase sequences. Foxx stands out among the cast as a dangerous ex-con.