The stakes pile up when Baby’s pulled into one last job and plots his escape, leading to a series of increasingly messy encounters as his speed-demon skills kick into overdrive. Fortunately, he finds respite in a tentative romantic connection with good-natured waitress Deborah (Lily James), a character who’s somewhat underdeveloped but gels nicely with Baby’s mounting desire to find a purpose beyond his risky profession. All of these demented antagonists are exaggerated cartoons on par with their names, but that sits well with the way Baby views them. His purity regularly vexes the scowling bad guys he carts around, including crazy-eyed killer Bats (Jamie Foxx), smarmy Buddy (Jon Hamm), and Buddy’s leering girlfriend, Darling (Eiza Gonzalez).
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Like a lot of well-meaning movie criminals, Baby wants to flee the life of crime, but needs the money so badly that he’s trapped in his perilous routine. Fortunately, he dominates almost every scene. Zipping around town as headphones dangle from his ears, Baby would be a blast to watch even if the movie relegated him to a supporting role. He thinks in terms of beats even when they’re invisible to everyone else, secretly recording the vulgar banter of his criminal peers and looping the audio to make his own funky remixes.
Elgort has the muted ferocity of a latter-day James Dean, but glides down the sidewalk and slides across the scenery like an outlaw Fred Astaire. The movie hovers within the confines of his ubiquitous playlist, and generates immediate suspense whenever it goes away.īaby needs his melodies for practical reasons, but they’re also key to his identity, a hodgepodge of classic masculine archetypes. A man of few words, he’s haunted by an accident in his childhood that leaves a ringing in his ears, and he fills the invasive hum with more agreeable sounds. Early on, Wright establishes the rhythms governing Baby’s world, as he blasts The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms” while accelerating through town. Operating under the employ of robbery maestro Doc (a stern Kevin Spacey), Baby quietly works off a debt to his boss by hauling two-bit criminals out of harm’s way, while caring for his deaf surrogate father (CJ Jones) on the side. If Busby Berkeley made “Grand Theft Auto,” it might look something like this exuberant comic caper, in which young getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) speeds through highways and back alleys seemingly impervious to police advances so long as he has a smooth beat to guide his maneuvers. The director’s most ambitious work to date is a wildly successful romantic heist comedy, propelled from scene to scene with a lively soundtrack that elevates its slick chase scenes into a realm that develops its own satisfying beat. Like every Edgar Wright movie since “Shaun of the Dead,” the director’s fifth feature, “ Baby Driver,” takes a ludicrous concept and turns it into a brilliant exercise in high style and a rush of big ideas.
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