GET AWAY!
Downton’s Lily James and baby-faced Ansel Elgort as the new Bonnie and Clyde in a thrillingly cool drama about a robbery gang’s wheelman?
The film-maker Edgar Wright is best known as the director of Hot Fuzz and the much-loved zombie spoof Shaun Of The Dead. But, as you may recall, he also directed Don’t, the Hammer Horror-style comedy trailer that played between parts one and two of Grindhouse, the thoroughly American B-movie mash-up from 2007 directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
Now, after a decade in which Wright’s career has gone nowhere very interesting, he’s back with a film that he’s written as well as directed, which is set in America and has clearly been influenced by both Tarantino and Rodriguez. And it turns out to be one of the surprise treats of the summer. There are moments when it’s so achingly cool, stylish or technically brilliant (and occasionally all three at once) you want to stand up and applaud.
Yes, this story of a baby-faced getaway driver who not only goes by the name of Baby but just happens to be the best driver in town is derivative. Apart from comedy flourishes and a prolix screenplay that are Tarantino through and through, there are obvious echoes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, less obvious echoes of Adam Smith’s Trespass Against Us, as well as Gone In 60 Seconds, The Getaway… I could go on.
But what gives Baby Driver its clear creative edge is its lightness of touch – this is a film as prepared to charm as it is to shock – and its gorgeously photogenic youthful vitality. Its young stars – Ansel Elgort, who plays Baby, and Lily James, as the diner waitress he falls in love with, Bonnie and
Clyde-style – look like they’ve just stumbled out of high school but light up the screen in a way that will bring tears to the eyes of any actor over 30.
A beautifully cast Elgort, who is 23 in real life but looks younger, is brilliant as Baby, a boy-man who loves his sunglasses almost as much as he loves his iPods. As comfortable with retro-tech as he is with new, but haunted by childhood tragedy, he’s rarely to be found without shades on and headphones in.
But anyone who thinks Baby might be slow or zoned out is very wrong – he has total recall and, as his underworld boss Doc (an excellent Kevin Spacey) knows, he’s the best there is behind the wheel. But if you make a living robbing banks, sooner or later something is going to go wrong. Isn’t it? The film’s beat-perfect editing and use of music are fabulous (if you don’t come out humming Simon & Garfunkel’s Baby Driver, it will be Bob & Earl’s Harlem Shuffle), and look out for a romantic interlude in a laundromat that could have come straight out of La La Land. What lets it down? Well, the style and the sharp comedy eventually make way for more familiar action and a distinctly darker mood. Jamie Foxx, as a bank robber who believes in shooting first and asking questions afterwards, seems convinced he really is in a Tarantino movie, and the frenetic, tyre-squealing climax tests our suspension of disbelief. But Wright is to be congratulated. He gets a terrific supporting turn out of Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, catapults the already promising Elgort into the big time, and gets his own career impressively back on track. Definitely a good day at the office.
The music is fabulous (if you don’t come out humming Simon and Garfunkel’s Baby Driver, it will be Bob and Earl’s Harlem Shuffle)