Grade: B
Baby Driver will be one of the more entertaining action movies you’ll see, and certainly the most fun one you’ll see this year. I didn’t love it, like, say, Ocean’s 11 or From Dusk Til Dawn, but writer/director Edgar Wright has put together a hip, enjoyable, memorable effort.
Ansel Elgort stars as Baby – a getaway driver for a series of robberies orchestrated by Doc (Kevin Spacey). Spacey is a master at hanging each line out to dry, and making every syllable count. Who could forget his “No. You don’t get to tell me what to do. Ever. Again.” from American Beauty? I had only previously seen Elgort as the terminally ill boyfriend from The Fault in Our Stars, and I found his performance there to be annoying, surfaced, and actor-y. He is much more effective here, and does everything right. Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx bring superb supporting characters to the table, and of the faces you might not be familiar with, Eiza Gonzalez and Lily James do marvelous work as significant others of, respectively, the Hamm and Elgort characters.
Filmed mostly in Atlanta, the local audience will recognize many locations. The songs on the soundtrack show up to punctuate the action like they did to great effect in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. How often are you going to see a shootout scene where the rhythm of the shots fired are in tandem with the drum beats and accented notes of the song playing? You’ll find that here. And we finally do hear the movie’s namesake – that great Simon and Garfunkel song that’s been in my head ever since I heard about this film.
Grade: B
Film Reviews by Mark 
Leave a comment