Movie Review: Baby Driver

Baby Driver's name and much of the premise evokes Speed Racer, and the movie can almost be described as a re-imagining of the concept. In some ways, Baby and Debora bear a similarity to Speed and Trixie, though you'd be hard-pressed to find any other parallels among Baby Driver's cast.

I'd love to try watching this back-to-back with the Wachowski Sisters' 2008 adaptation - I think the two films would compliment each other, despite representing polar opposite approaches to automobile racing/chases. While the Wachowskis delighted in using CG to build an unapologetic cartoon world, Edgar Wright uses practical tools to transform the setting. Baby Driver's world is still surreal, but that emerges from pacing, editing, and music, rather than imagery. I love both movies and suspect the contrasts and similarities would be fascinating.

That's a rather long-winded way of trying to touch on the experience of watching Baby Driver, a beautifully intense homage to crime cinema. Homage is nothing new to Wright, who's probably best known for Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim, but this represents a very different approach. There's still comedy, but it's far more muted than we're used to. The film is very much a work of genre, not a statement about it. And, unlike Shaun (and the other movies in Wright's Cornetto Trilogy), it starts and ends in that genre. There's no fake-out where it evolves from light comedy to horror; it's an action/crime movie, through and through.

I don't consider that an inherently good or bad thing, but crafting a movie with a relatively conventional approach to plot and character should raise expectations that those elements will be handled well. And, if there's anywhere the movie disappoints, it's here. The story is less original than I'd have liked, and two key characters, namely Baby and Debora, are under-developed.

I'm more forgiving of that with Baby. He almost seems more like a video game protagonist than a lead, but the movie's experience ties to this so completely, it's hard to view it as much of a flaw. Sure, he's more a force pushing forward than a developed character, but it's that force that makes the movie worth seeing.

Debora, on the other hand, is harder to hand wave. She's the movie's love interest, and by the end of the movie represents the bulk of Baby's motivation. And yet, there's really very little justification for her choices or the leads' mutual affection for each other. As far as I can tell, Baby loves her, because she talked to him, and she loves him, because... I guess the script calls for it?

Come to think of it, Wright's filmography doesn't include a lot of significant female roles, outside of fairly generic love interests. It might be a good idea for him to experiment with some new points of view, along with his shifts in genre.

Fortunately, the movie's other characters pick up a lot of the slack. Jon Hamm, Eiza González, and Jamie Foxx are all great, as is Kevin Spacey, who plays a character who could almost be an aging Keyser Söze. The script does a good job shuffling them to keep you guessing which represents the real threat.

Likewise, the story might be light, but the storytelling, driven forward by music and an instinct to escape danger, is expertly handled.

The script could have been better, but the direction was damn near perfect. The choreography and cinematography alone make this well worth a trip to the theater, especially if you could use a break from CG-heavy blockbusters.