Band of crooks hits all the right notes
IT’S been a week since I saw “Baby Driver,” and I’m still pleasantly buzzed. The kind of buzz you get when an action scene really hits it right, when motion syncs perfectly with the soundtrack, when mindless violence becomes downright graceful. This is the song of the summer in movie form, a playful ode to car chases, Motown, diners, that moment when you find the exact tune that matches your mood, driving stick, crime capers, ’80s movies and love.
Ansel Elgort, serviceable in “The Fault in Our Stars” and trapped in the “Divergent” series, finds his literal groove here as wheelman for heist kingpin Doc (Kevin Spacey), who puts enough stock in Baby’s driving skills that he doesn’t mind the kid’s ever-present headphones. They’re worn to counter chronic tinnitus — putting nonstop music into the ears of our leading man and thus into ours. Baby’s whole world is kinetic, each scene choreographed to the rhythms of what’s on — whether flooring it to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s raucous “Bellbottoms” or running a grisly junkyard errand to, hilariously, the Commodores’ “Easy.” He even stealthily records bits of conversations, DJ’ing them into mixes at home, where he looks after his deaf foster dad (CJ Jones). This is the first thriller I can recall to use American Sign Language — a nice touch.
Director-writer Edgar Wright (“The World’s End”) moves away from comedy here, but his “Shaun of the Dead”-era humor hangs on in a handful of jokes, one hinging on a Michael Myers mask and another on Spacey’s bone-dry delivery.
The “House of Cards” actor vamps it up as Baby’s protective-but-terrifying boss. Jamie Foxx, as the psychopath Bats, is also a delight. Rounding out the crime ring is Jon Hamm as the punk-coiffed Buddy and Eiza González as his sharkeyed partner Darling. Jon Bernthal and Flea pop in briefly, too. The short straw goes to Lily James (“Downton Abbey,” “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”) as Baby’s waitress gal Debora — like every ingénue, she’s mostly just required to be lovely. But her road-trip wanderlust makes her a sort of Sloane Peterson to Elgort’s Ferris Bueller, channeled in his white-sleeved jacket (also highly Han Solo-evocative) and in a madcap foot chase through downtown Atlanta.
Sure, this is fundamentally a summer trifle, a heist movie with extra style — but it’s also the first time I’ve ever laughed with sheer delight during a getaway chase. Tune into the frequency of “Baby Driver,” and it’ll reverberate with you for days.