Review of Baby Driver (2017) by Ben W — 04 Jul 2017

If you like Edgar Wright's work (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead), you can probably recognize it on sight. Quirky - and unapologetically so - the humor either resonates with you or it doesn't. And in scenes without dialogue, the movie delivers a good time, with car chases in a pseudo-musical delivery. This may sound silly, because the very idea of such a combination is silly... however, Wright's expert guidance lead to me smiling throughout - not because it didn't work, but because it shouldn't. Miraculously, it somehow does.

Young getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a reluctant but reliable asset to kingpin "Doc" (Kevin Spacey). Working against his will to pay off a debt, Baby listens to his personal soundtrack to block out his tinnitus, which he's suffered from since childhood. We join Baby as he discovers what freedom is.

Baby Driver is fast-paced, and manages to balance high stakes with editing that makes it hard to stop having fun long enough to notice. However in the two hours we are with these characters, the pace never lets up to allow the love story to breathe, and it's for this reason it stops short of perfection. While Ansel Elgort does a great job expressing emotion with few words, it's hard to not give well-deserved credit to a top-form Jamie Foxx, as well as Jon Hamm, for their incredible performances in this must-see.