Baby Driver

The instant one tells you it's an Edgar Wright's film, you know how visually and audibly distinctive the picture will be. And Baby Driver is no different.

As in all the director's works, Baby Driver, from start to finish, is a seamless rhythmic filmmaking synchronization! There's nothing quite out there that resembles the auteur's sense of style in fusing every element that makes up a motion picture with one another and weaving them in unison to tell a story! Movements, editing, framing, positions, dialogues, soundtracks and cinematography are cooked in a collaboratively catchy presentation like never before! Uninterrupted camera navigation, image swapping from carpark to dumpster, Griff (Jon Bernthal) slapping off Baby's shades, rapid editing, swift screenplay, thematic sign language texts, white lines on road tailing heart beats, car chase, wiper speed and massacre shooting that follow corresponding musical beats are foot-tappingly enjoyable! Even the violence and brutality are the same! Fantastic warm color scheme is a boon, with the laundry scene ticking in memory constantly. Baby Driver is undoubtedly a great piece of original filmmaking product in terms of technical prowess.

This is not to say Baby Driver does not have strong story and writing. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is our idiosyncratic protagonist. He drives the best. He doesn't talk much. Most importantly, he is constantly hooked to his music, which pretty much pisses many others off. He doesn't rebel when mistreated. He minds his own business. He follows a certain song duration and rhythm before committing a theft. Scene after scene reveals information about the hero. And as you know more about him, the character becomes interesting. Due to an unfortunate childhood tragedy, he is affected by severe tinnitus. To clear a debt, he works for Doc, played aesthetically as always by Kevin Spacey. But, Baby wants a legal life of his own without being involved in crimes. He falls in love with Debora, played by the very talented Lily James. How is he to leave the kingpin? How can he betray him? This is the basic conflict that forms the crux of this Edgar Wright's 2017 outing. The writer-director has aptly utilize visual storytelling, for instance, toy car rolling off the table to show the protagonist's slip of mind and verbal exposition to ram through Baby's past in one go without the audience realizing!

Baby Driver is very much about the main character than it is about the story. In a standard, simple and straightforward tale as such, Edgar Wright has marinated it with a unique blend of musical heist flavor. The soundtracks are good with lyrics carved on murals and trees. In an exciting inciting incident, he establishes the film's tone, setting and genre. When the first car chase occurs with Baby blending in with the red cars on street, audience are well informed about the action quotient of the picture! And all of it are of high quality! The drifts, driving choreography, reverse pursuit in parking lot, up the ramp opposite the bank and the finale getaway with fast disguise change are awesome!

What's an Edgar Wright film without humor! This feature is loaded with it! One such example is Baby's odd hobby of recording words spoken and mixing it into tapes, and the hysterical laughter said habit induces when he is interrogated by fellow crime mates is easily the best sequence in the entire motion picture! His team members are horrifically appalled at the peculiar habit as we are! Weapons description using types of pork meat dishes, Sam the kid and robbers with Austin Powers' masks instead of Michael Myers' are some of the funny moments too! Buddy's sudden appearance revolts. Black and white dream dazzles.

Jamie Foxx does a stellar job as the impulsively lunatic Bats. His interactions with Baby are to watch out for like the tense in the diner. As the Midpoint approaches and Baby decides to take a major action by killing off Bats in a shocking death, the pace picks up. Darling's (Eiza González) demise clicks in well with Buddy's (Jon Hamm) motivation. Baby being sent off to prison is sad but definitely yields a proper, beautiful and satisfying ending. It's endearing how witnesses are able to highlight the goodness in a man without labelling a person who's present in a wrongdoing as a mere criminal. This is exactly why the film is named Baby Driver - to narrate you the story of a good, innocent person under the pretense of crime-doing.

It's the romance and conflicts that falter in the picture. The relationship between Baby and Debora should have been more impactful and captivating, although they do share mildly engaging episodes such as the conversation about songs that have their own names in it. Conflicts in the first half of Act II should have been more powerful and directly have the protagonist's active participation in it. The climax battle that goes from vehicle to vehicle is a little overstretched. How did Buddy escape from the falling car unseen anyways? The purpose of the group's visit to the diner is to eat, but they left without doing only that, therefore it feels as if the particular plotline simply appears for the sake of linking Debora into this whole affair coincidentally.