Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx
Rated R, 113 minutes
“Baby Driver” isn’t technically a musical, but it may as well be. Few movies in recent memory, bona fide musicals included, have so thoroughly weaved music through their narratives or so explicitly tied a soundtrack to the fates of their characters. The novelty of “Baby Driver” is that its soundtrack comes in the form of the protagonist’s iPod; that is, rather than a performer, he’s purely a listener. It’s an unusual ploy, one that nearly turns this movie into the insufferable exercise of going through someone else’s vinyl collection (oh, you haven’t heard of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion?), but impeccable pacing and engrossing performances make this movie a surprisingly fun thriller.
This is also a heist movie, but instead of following the robbers, “Baby Driver” shows the heists through the eyes—or rather, ears—of the getaway driver. The stoic Baby (Ansel Elgort, “The Fault in Our Stars”), earbuds in and fingers tapping along to his music, is the go-to driver for an Atlanta crime boss, Doc (Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards”), who regularly sends Baby out with different crews on increasingly elaborate jobs. For his part, Baby considers this a temporary arrangement; he just has to pay back a debt to Doc, and then he can get out of town, maybe go away with Debora (Lily James, “Cinderella”), a similarly music-obsessed waitress at his favorite diner.
But Doc has different plans, enlisting Baby to drive the getaway car for another heist, this one more ambitious than all the rest. Forced back into a world he wants out of, and now working with a crew that includes the loudmouthed Bats (Jamie Foxx, “Ray”) and the quick-tempered Buddy (Jon Hamm, “Mad Men”), Baby suddenly has a slew of intimidating and well-armed obstacles standing between him and the normalcy he craves.
Despite the heaviness of this plot (and I didn’t even mention the childhood trauma part), “Baby Driver” maintains a light atmosphere, principally through its music. Not only does the soundtrack, largely composed of obscure pop and jazz, provide a constant buoyancy to the action, but Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) commits wholeheartedly to the mood, adding touches to emphasize the connection between music and Baby’s life. Consider the myriad moments in which the action synchronizes with the music, such as the title sequence, in which Baby walks down the street to a song whose lyrics show up, right on cue, in the graffiti on the walls. “Baby Driver” takes place somewhere between a music video and reality, and it’s a unique and engaging experience for it.
Wright’s attention to detail in the movie’s various chase sequences, meanwhile, nicely complements this music video ethos. The editing throughout these chase scenes is crisp and rhythmic, never losing the viewer in the chaos, and the action itself is a creative leap beyond cars simply following each other.
“Baby Driver” is also the rare thriller that succeeds on a more basic, human level, largely thanks to its supporting cast. Lily James is a charming romantic interest, actually making us believe that Debora is worth the risks Baby takes, while Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm steal their scenes by embracing their characters’ hot-headedness. Hamm gives an especially off-the-wall performance, spectacularly miscast and loving every second of it.
By contrast, Ansel Elgort is an unremarkable lead, his deadpan inscrutability giving the viewer little to cling to. Of course, this is by design; Baby is such a blank slate because the music in his ears is supposed to fill in the details for us. While this reliance on music is an innovative conceit for a feature-length film, it’s ultimately insufficient. At the movie’s end, Baby remains an unwelcoming enigma.
In retrospect, it seems almost juvenile that Wright expected the soundtrack to fully develop his protagonist. Whether that was poor judgment or just a risk that didn’t pay off, “Baby Driver” ends up feeling like the film equivalent of a high school date between two nervous teenagers convinced that similar taste in music is a sign of true love. It’s a surprisingly naive sentiment to lie at the core of such a technically excellent and entertaining movie, but then, a style-over-substance approach to storytelling isn’t such a bad thing when a movie has style in spades.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 7/7/17.