Within 5-10 minutes of "Baby Driver" beginning, I knew it was going to be my favorite Edgar Wright film thus far. Few movies ooze style/joy like "Baby Driver". I also think that one of the things that sets it apart from most films in Hollywood today (and even Wright's past work) is that it doesn't feel the need to hide behind irony.
"Baby Driver" follows a young driving prodigy named Baby, a real "Mozart in a go-kart" as Kevin Spacey puts it. Baby has suffered an accident that renders him partially deaf and so he listens to music constantly to drown out the constant ringing in his ears. As such, the entire film's soundtrack is mostly diegetic (actually existing within the film universe) and it is a blast to watch the characters react to the music Baby is playing. Sometimes Buddy (John Hamm) digs it, often Bats (Jaimie Fox) makes fun of it. As long as there is music playing you feel like Baby is going to tear shit up and kick ass, which makes in contrast the sequences when there is no music very tense.
It's a great way to play with audience's fears. Things are going great, then someone breaks Baby's ipod and the music cuts out. Immediately you feel that the stakes for this character just got way higher. This unspoken narrative emerges that he who controls the music, controls the world, which makes a later sequence in which a character uses Baby's music against him all the more sinister.
The car chases are spectacular, inventive, and almost like sequences in a musical. They mostly shy away from CGI and continued to pull off inventive stunts that literally caused me to gasp in my seat. This film isn't as viscerally violent as Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" (Shawn Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, At World's End) and I think that's actually a positive. Violence has no meaning in a film where people's heads are getting bashed in every ten minutes. By dialing down the Tarantino-esque violence of his previous films Wright manages to make the subtle violence as disturbing to the viewer as it is to the character, Baby.
Ansel Elgort is amazing as the titular character, (Baby) and his performance is believable. As I grow older and more jaded towards the Hollywood film making process, I often resent the "brilliant child savior" trope that is usually used just to get kids into the theater, but in this film it feels necessary and earned.
Baby is a young man forced into debt, and Doc (Kevin Spacey) has been making him pay off that debt by performing high stakes heists for over a decade. Baby's character was essentially forced into indentured servitude as a child and then raised for years to be the perfect getaway driver. Elgort does a great job riding the line between too cool to talk to you, weird enough to dance in the streets on NYC, and autistic enough to often speak exclusively in "Monsters Inc" quotes to people he is afraid of.
Most characters in the script show a lot of nuance and have plenty of room to surprise you within the film. The criminals are portrayed as what they actually are, human beings. They all start off as caricatures, but eventually reveal vulnerable, dark, and powerful aspects of their personality to the viewer. By the end of the film most characters do not fit into a single easy characterization box. The only real exception to this is the female character of Darling (Eiza González) who remains static as the "sexy dangerous flirt". This is disappointing in a film where every other character is revealed to have hidden depths, including the 8 year old nephew of Doc, who is on screen for a grand total of 5 minutes.
The main love interest Deborah, (Lily James) is similarly shallow, though not to the same degree. She mostly falls into the screenplay pitfalls of male fantasy love interest. She's pretty, completely innocent, likes everything the male main character likes, supports him no matter what, understands him perfectly, and is oddly clueless (and then unconcerned) with his flagrantly criminal lifestyle. She's whatever Baby needs her to be in whichever scene they're in. First she's laughably naive, but now she's keeping her cool under intense/murderous pressure?
We live in a post "Mad Max: Fury Road" world, there is no excuse for having only passive female characters in an action film. If you're going to have female leads, at least give them something to do beyond make out with John Hamm or make out with Ansel Elgort. Both women mostly serve as a means for their male counterparts to get angry or protective. Deborah comes out slightly ahead, having a SMALL amount of personal agency in the film's climax and conclusion.
But that editing doe...
Most Hollywood films like to edit so that you don't notice the flow of shots. Edgar Wright movies revel in their editing, and they force you to notice and revel in it too. Cuts come like a percussion track, accentuating the on screen movement, strobing to the beat of the music they are lovingly married to. Watch the trailer above, note how the music, movement and editing all flow together into an unstoppable train awesome forward momentum. Gun shots become part of the soundtrack, movement comes across like a dance, the entire film feels like that trailer.
Look, go see this film, it's amazing. Ramona Flowers has more depth and agency than Deborah, but this film is earnest and direct in a way that Edgar Wright's films often aren't. There isn't a whole lot of wink wink I just did a superhero pose to the audience, there's just great music, great action, and great acting.