The Good, The Bad and The Critic

Established on March 19th, 2012 and pioneered by film fanatic Michael J. Carlisle. The Good, The Bad and The Critic will analyze classic and contemporary films from all corners of the globe. This title references Sergei Leone's influential spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Review #991: Baby Driver (2017)

Title: Baby Driver
Year: 2017
Director: Edgar Wright
Country: UK
Language: English

If you enjoyed Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive, then it is without a shadow of a doubt that you'll love Edgar Wright's Baby Driver. Wright had the basic idea for the plot in 1994; he adapted the film's original planned beginning into a 2003 music video he directed for Mint Royale's Blue Song. After leaving his long-in-development Ant-Man film with Marvel in 2014, the director pursued his passion project.

After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail.

A lot of films with great soundtracks (La La Land, Suicide Squad) would work well as glorified music videos, but are unfit for the silver screen. With Baby Driver Wright creates a memorable piece of cinema by fusing the crime caper, the car chase and a killer soundtrack into one well oiled machine. Each song is carefully selected, having planned each choice at the scripting phase. Wright's foresight creates a fluid film that has a remarkable musical style. 

Wright’s editing team of Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos synchronize the picture in such a way that they achieve a rare symphony of rhythm, style and substance. Even a trip to the coffee shop, shot in an extended take with steady cam, can't help but feel lively and full of energy. The downside however, is that while flashy car sequences take center stage there aren't really any deep nuanced relationships.  Baby and his girlfriend Deborah's (Lily James) romance is far too simplistic. Heck, Deborah herself  is hardly a strong female character, acting mainly as the damsel in distress. 

Though the acting by Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx & Ansel Elgort is remarkable, I feel Baby Driver scrapped character development in favor of being a slick "cool" genre picture. In short, these characters are nowhere near as well written as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's from Hot Fuzz. Even as style over substance, there is still quite a bit of substance to be had and thus Baby Driver is a very rewarding and enriching 



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