★★★
Edgar Wright pumps this film with energy. From early on, we’re taken on car chases, and we’re involved in hold-ups and shootouts. To this mix, he adds compelling editing. Action sequences are cut in the short bursts that are standard, but Wright adds music that not only creates mood but dictates, in a very direct way, where cuts occur. Throughout, he pairs a particularly strong rhythmic moment in the music with a movement or cut in the sequence we’re watching. And the director doesn’t limit this editing technique to action sequences; we also see meetings and conversations cut to music. One tour-de-force moment of this technique happens as Baby is walking to a meeting carrying coffee and Ansel Elgort gives us an athletic, dancelike performance which is edited to the music he is listening. It even includes includes a pantomime sax line with the musical instrument painted on a wall in the background. In fact, it’s frequently the music that Baby is listening to which ties into the editing, an engaging conflating of what’s happening in the film with the formal elements of the film’s construction.
And an exaggerated formalism fills much of the of Baby Driver, too. We see it in the stylized editing and chase scenes, and we hear it in dialog that is at the edge of realistic but has the strong feel of art. The story unfolds in a series of stagy scenes, from Baby’s conversations with Deborah and Joseph to set décor like the laundromat with lines of matching monochrome clothes in the front-loading machines. The shot of Baby’s release from prison has an outrageous rainbow in the background. Style dominates in Baby Driver, but for all the surface contrivance, the film has some emotional impact. Baby Driver is not a cold exercise of method like we expect in a Tarantino project; instead, the form here has heart. None of the characters is deep, developed or complex, but there’s enough in them for us to like them.
Baby Driver misses on some points. While Elgort sells his Baby by the boyish physicality of his performance, what should have been good casting doesn’t pan out for other characters in film. Lily James has the looks and manner for a good Debora, but she can’t deliver the character, while Kevin Spacey hardly tries in his line deliveries outlining the next heist. Even Jamie Fox gives us a one-note psycho in Bats. A bigger disappointment, though, is the way Wright drains the energy from the climax of the film as Baby and Buddy face off in an over-extended parking garage encounter.
Reservations aside, Baby Driver is one of the more enjoyable projects on the screen this summer. Much of it has heart and energy, and it’s fun to see how Wright strives to make a car city like Atlanta into a character in the film. And there really is an Octane coffee in town.
Edgar Wright pumps this film with energy. From early on, we’re taken on car chases, and we’re involved in hold-ups and shootouts. To this mix, he adds compelling editing. Action sequences are cut in the short bursts that are standard, but Wright adds music that not only creates mood but dictates, in a very direct way, where cuts occur. Throughout, he pairs a particularly strong rhythmic moment in the music with a movement or cut in the sequence we’re watching. And the director doesn’t limit this editing technique to action sequences; we also see meetings and conversations cut to music. One tour-de-force moment of this technique happens as Baby is walking to a meeting carrying coffee and Ansel Elgort gives us an athletic, dancelike performance which is edited to the music he is listening. It even includes includes a pantomime sax line with the musical instrument painted on a wall in the background. In fact, it’s frequently the music that Baby is listening to which ties into the editing, an engaging conflating of what’s happening in the film with the formal elements of the film’s construction.
And an exaggerated formalism fills much of the of Baby Driver, too. We see it in the stylized editing and chase scenes, and we hear it in dialog that is at the edge of realistic but has the strong feel of art. The story unfolds in a series of stagy scenes, from Baby’s conversations with Deborah and Joseph to set décor like the laundromat with lines of matching monochrome clothes in the front-loading machines. The shot of Baby’s release from prison has an outrageous rainbow in the background. Style dominates in Baby Driver, but for all the surface contrivance, the film has some emotional impact. Baby Driver is not a cold exercise of method like we expect in a Tarantino project; instead, the form here has heart. None of the characters is deep, developed or complex, but there’s enough in them for us to like them.
Baby Driver misses on some points. While Elgort sells his Baby by the boyish physicality of his performance, what should have been good casting doesn’t pan out for other characters in film. Lily James has the looks and manner for a good Debora, but she can’t deliver the character, while Kevin Spacey hardly tries in his line deliveries outlining the next heist. Even Jamie Fox gives us a one-note psycho in Bats. A bigger disappointment, though, is the way Wright drains the energy from the climax of the film as Baby and Buddy face off in an over-extended parking garage encounter.
Reservations aside, Baby Driver is one of the more enjoyable projects on the screen this summer. Much of it has heart and energy, and it’s fun to see how Wright strives to make a car city like Atlanta into a character in the film. And there really is an Octane coffee in town.
