Well I’ll be damned. I haven’t seen it all. After eight Fast & Furious films, three Cars movies and a slew of Transporters, I would have guessed that car chases have been done. What exactly can you show me that I haven’t seen already? What possible take on professional driving have I not yet seen? This I why I go to the movies, of course; I love to be shown something new.
The something new here is Baby, driver extraordinaire. Yes, his name is “Baby.” He’s an adult man who drives getaway cars for a living –and in this case, the word “living” is meant literally. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is indebted to minor crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) and it’s pretty clear that Doc is something of a puppeteer when it comes to Baby’s future. The strange doesn’t stop at Baby’s preferred name; he isn’t caught dead without sunglasses or tunes. The latter can be explained by chronic tinnitus, no explanation is afforded the former. (We can only assume Baby also has a case of chronic eyesightus.) Baby’s composed and aloof demeanor is off-putting, especially to crime partners. Thuggish Griff (Jon Bernthal) thinks he’s slow; sociopathic Bats (Jamie Foxx) thinks he isn’t paying attention. Both are very wrong, but that doesn’t make their heist experience any better.
The fact is that Baby is unbelievably talented at escaping. Whenever I see cops pursue a perp on film, I suspend disbelief when the car escapes. I’m sorry. I live in a city. I know the skills cops have and the tools at their disposal; high speed, attention grabbing chases end in jail. That’s what happens. Baby Driver is the first film I’ve seen in years in which I actually found the escape “realistic,” by which I mean “believable, considering;” Baby is that good. He programs the escapes to his favorite tunes. Lookie here, there’s a little something for everybody: hero, car chases, theme music, cops, heists … now if only there were a girl. Enter Debora (Lily James).
I can’t say I’m wild about picking up a waitress in a diner; I’ve been told too many times that certain situations are romantic taboo, and one of them is customer/staff interaction. You really don’t want
anybody to get the idea that it’s cool to hit on somebody taking your order. But Baby isn’t exactly Don Juan, and we get the idea he’s as much into the song Debora hums on her path between tables as he’s into her. It’s not just the tinnitus that compels Baby’s musical devotion. Baby and Debora are orphan children, tied to (almost) nothing but circumstance, and so this becomes sort of a True Romance set-up; can Baby escape the life of crime? Will his illicit behavior find Debora and Baby’s foster father (CJ Jones)?
Ansel Elgort has quickly developed into an actor I’d much rather see on film than, say, Miles Teller. His work in the Divergent series was negligible at best, but his work as romantic lead in both Baby Driver and The Fault in Our Stars will make him employable for years on end. It almost seems a shame that “Baby Driver” is to be Ansel’s go-to reference because, well, it’s a bad title. One could argue that the only bad titles are ones you can’t remember to which I offer Benji The Hunted and Smilla’s Sense of Snow. These are bad titles. Baby Driver is a bad title. But I’m not going to hold it against Baby Driver, one of the ten best films of the year.
♪Nobody drives it better
Cool in a life full of stress
Nobody’s in it half as deep as you
Baby, you’re a mess♫
Rated R, 113 Minutes
D: Edgar Wright
W: Edgar Wright
Genre: The glamorous world of abettors
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who has ever made a mix tape
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People turned off by the stupid title
♪ Parody inspired by “Nobody Does It Better”
