In Baby Driver we
follow the story of a young reluctant, but prodigious getaway driver, Baby,
played expertly by the little known actor Ansel Egort, who due to a previous indiscretion
is in hock to Kevin Spacey, a roguish heist fixer.
In the opening, strong scene Baby shows off his driving skills in one of the best car chase scenes
in recent times, even if does owe a debt to Drive. If you enjoy expertly
executed car chase sequences then this will put a smile on your face, but don't get to comfortable as this movie never quite hits the heights of its
early promises.
Perhaps most grating
is Baby's and therefore the film's obsession with music. Taking the Guardians
of the Galaxy formula of using obscure hits of yesteryear and taking it further, or simply cashing in on it, the whole film revolves around
the rhythm of its soundtrack. There are a couple of gunfights where the shooting
mirrors the beats. All very clever but frankly, it all gets a bit annoying as we
constantly flick from mediocre track to track whilst stylised mayhem keeps an unlikely time in the background.
The masters of this
style of soundtrack filmmaking is Tarantino and Scorcese. However Edgar's film
has none of the sparkling witty dialogue which is the hallmark of these
film makers. The absence of which puts a lot of pressure on a plot which fails to step up due to continual stretching of plausibility. In particular some of the characters actions towards the end of the film, the most egregious of which is Spacey's, do not make any sense at all. Anyway who seriously robs
post offices anymore, ironically the central crime in the movie is as outdated as the music.
With the plot not holding the film up all that is left is the characters. Unfortunately the films set up of using different crews on the various heists in the movie result in a lack
of time to develop any of the characters fully before they are either killed off or substituted. John Hamm as Buddy puts in a good performance but
his characters back story is unconvincing. I've never met a banker who turned
into an armed robber, although I have definitely met Bankers who have robbed a lot of people, but they generally use credit default swaps rather than guns.
This cross between
Fast and Furious, Guardians of the Galaxy and any generic heist movie you can
think of is by no means a terrible movie, it's just not as entertaining as it
thinks it is.
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