Baby Driver is a cool new heist movie starring cool actors playing cool characters. The movie is going for cool and knows its cool and that could have gone wrong but instead goes mostly right. It’s all style and plenty of substance.
Ansel Elgort (from The Fault in Our Stars) plays Baby, a fresh-faced young man who works as a getaway driver for Kevin Spacey’s bank robbing crew. He’s the best in a biz he doesn’t want to be part of but he owes Spacy so when he calls, Baby drives. Baby has tinnitus – a hum in the drum – so he uses old school ipods to drown out the noise plus also, hopefully, some of the guilt for the violence the rest of his crew does while he waits in the car. The music is also a clever excuse for the driving (and other scenes) to be choreographed to the beat of the songs.
So the music is a big part of the movie and its used well. You won’t find any modern pop on the sound track nor will you hear the usual classics. There are some deep cuts on this soundtrack… and I only recognized a few songs so I suspect people more steeped in these tunes will have an even better time at the theater. For example, I didn’t know Baby Driver itself is the name of a Simon and Garfunkel tune. When they used a Queen song, it’s Brighton Rock, not one of the usual suspects. It’s a cool use of a cool soundtrack.
Ansel Elgort is surprisingly cool – playing it distant and cool with the gang, likable in his home life scenes, and charming in the romance. Lily James – impossibly fresh-faced – plays his waitress love interest. Together, they have mad chemistry and the film doesn’t shy away from spending screen time with these two improbably pretty petty.
Kevin Spacey as the boss is working Peak Spacey so you know he’s good. Jamie Foxx plays an unhinged, dangerous, unstable criminal and he’s pretty good. The kind of guy you don’t want our protagonist to be around since you know the bodies are going to start piling up. Jon Hamm and Eiza Gonzalez are a pair of bank robbers equally as dangerous as Foxx but far more stable and far more cool. Jon Hamm pulls off a great balancing act in this movie and is almost a revelation (except, you know, for Mad Men where he’s always been great).
The movie works as an action film and an actor’s film and that’s because the writing and dialog is very good. It’s kind of knowingly cool without overdoing it – the various cool lines don’t overstay their welcome and they don’t make you think, “Oh, the screenwriter is letting his clever words get in the way”.
I enjoyed how cool this movie was…. at least until it wasn’t. It kind of goes on for twenty minutes longer than it should. The final chase scene is mostly ok but then kind of goes full Terminator and loses some of the edge it needed. Slimming that up, keeping it focused, would have kept the film’s thumping pace on track. It doesn’t ruin the movie but it’s enough to damage what was a really great first half.
Not enough to not recommend the movie though – still a great, cool movie with great, cool actors. I recommend this film if you like heist / crime / getaway flicks, if you like the cast, if you like cool music played well, if you like smart dialog, or, hell, if you just like movies. It’s not perfect but it’s super likable and fun. Check it out.
Score: 86