Baby Driver

photo courtesy of bleedingcool.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is the kind of fun, colorful adventure that feels perfectly at home in the summer box office season. Wright may not be a household name, but he’s garnered a reputation for producing imaginative, eccentric films. With Baby Driver, he outdoes himself; the film is a burst of inventive excitement from start to finish.

     The movie follows Baby (Ansel Elgort), a getaway car driver working for cutthroat criminal boss Doc (Kevin Spacey). Baby listens to music on his headphones all the time, attempting to drown out the perpetual noise in his ears—a hindrance he’s dealt with ever since the childhood car accident that claimed his parents’ lives. Baby’s a natural at the wheel, but his criminal lifestyle threatens to endanger his foster parent (CJ Jones) and girlfriend Debora (Lily James). It’s up to Baby to outrun the forces—criminal and otherwise—that try to slow him down.

photo courtesy of collider.com

     Like its protagonist, Baby Driver wastes no time. It’s a whirlwind, flying through cars, locations, and even actors at breakneck speed. The whole experience is unashamedly indulgent; Wright makes no apologies for having a great time and taking the audience along for the ride.

     The fun comes, in large part, thanks to Baby Driver’s heist movie flair. There’s a certain glory to the film’s bank-robbin’, Bonnie and Clyde style action set pieces. In that respect, Buddy and Darling (Jon Hamm and Eiza Gonzalez, respectively) take center stage with solid performances. Baby leads the way during the movie’s car chases, which provide edge-of-your-seat thrills set to some groovy tunes (a la Guardians of the Galaxy). Both the chase sequences and the music are important to the movie’s panache.

photo courtesy of monkeysfightingrobots.com

     Ansel Elgort, best known for playing Caleb in the Divergent series, excels in the lead role. He’s charming, mischievous, and likeable enough to provide a strong performance. Baby’s story serves as the centerpiece of the plot, and the movie benefits by having such an interesting, well-rounded character at the forefront. The story is smartly crafted, putting Baby into situations that challenge him at his strengths and exploit his weaknesses—which leads to some delightful surprises for the audience. Driving the entire script is the question: will the criminal lifestyle which surrounds Baby corrupt his good-natured soul? For an action movie, it’s a mature and thoughtful foundation.

     FINAL VERDICT: Entertaining, effortless and triumphant, Baby Driver is one of the best movies of the summer. Family audiences should be advised, however, that the movie includes quite a bit of language, violence and even some gore.

SPOILERY DELICIOUSNESS

photo courtesy of ign.com

     The movie’s final scenes feature a series of tense confrontations between Baby and Buddy, ultimately resulting in Buddy’s death. Having taken Baby away from his natural habitat (cars), the story puts him back behind the wheel for the final conflict. It’s a fitting end that Baby should defeat Buddy on his own turf, on his own terms.

     Along the way, however, it appears that Baby himself has given in to the criminal lifestyle that he has spent the whole movie trying to wash his hands of—he brandishes a weapon, hijacks a car, and even shoots Buddy. It’s a startling turn of events, because prior to that point, Baby has only expressed disdain for the criminal tendencies of Doc, Bats (Jamie Foxx), and the others. When he sees a casualty firsthand during one of the robberies, it has a visible effect on Baby, who naturally connects the senseless loss of life to the death of his parents.

photo courtesy of latimes.com

     But Baby Driver doesn’t end with the climactic battle against Buddy. Instead, it shows Baby going to trial, going to prison, and eventually making his life with Debora a reality. The conclusion is realistic; it admits that you can’t escape from that kind of life unscathed. There are consequences. A scenario where Baby gets away without being influenced negatively in any way is as implausible as the botched escape attempt that ends in his arrest.

     That being said, we can infer that Baby’s character has endured mostly intact. He commits illegal and violent acts, of course, but as the testimonies at his trial tell us, he was still capable of committing acts of kindness. Perhaps most importantly, he was willing to let Debora go to answer for his crimes when escape became impossible. The final picture, then, is one in which the reality of violence’s corrupting, cyclical nature is appreciated—but Baby comes out on the other side, too.

photo courtesy of teaser-trailer.com