"Baby Driver" Review

I've seen everything Edgar Wright has made, but the trailers for Baby Driver didn't really feel like one of his movies; they felt like an oddly dark crime flick at odds with the usual levity his films had. (It didn't help that the title sounded like a kiddie picture like The Boss Baby.) The critics have spooged over it (98% RT score), but they always go crazy for anything that's not a sequel and Wright has been the Wronged Auteur after putting in 8 years developing Ant-Man only to leave the project over "creative differences" with Marvel. I went into the show with mixed impressions and, unfortunately, the movie lived down to my expectations. (Though the missus thought it was awesome.)

Ansel Elgort (I remember when Hollywood imposed better names on their performers) plays Baby, a getaway driver (see how that works?) for Kevin Spacey's crime boss whose car with a trunk full of valuable MacGuffins he stole thus obliging him to work off the debt by being the wheelman for heists Spacey masterminds. He's almost paid up and his just One More Job to work before he's free.

He's made the acquaintance of a pretty waitress (Lily James from the live-action Cinderella, looking like a young Madchen Amick) and is smitten with her, but this being a gangster movie, that One Last Job rapidly turns into a You Didn't Think You Were Going To Just Walk Away From This Life, Did You? and with the arrival of a scary new shooter named Bats (Jamie Foxx, actually acting for a change), the stakes are raised to the roof with deadly results.

While the car chases and gunfights are snappily shot and edited to the hipster-bait soundtrack with gun blasts in time with the rhythm (a thing first noted in the terrific Suicide Squad trailer and aped by so many other trailers now), there is an inescapable thinness to the plot and characters. We know nothing about James' character other than she's pretty and sweet and Baby is nearly a cipher; what was he going to do if Spacey had let him go? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When things get really dark in the last act, it's just too mean and gritty and less fun, despite being flashily executed.

I attribute these failings to Wright having sole authorship of the script. His "Cornetto Trilogy" (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End) were all co-written with Simon Pegg and the sublime Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had a co-writer and source material. Without the leavening of another voice, he's sort of exposed as more of a sharp director. There's no shame in that, but it unbalances the mix. There are some big laughs - a bit involving sunglasses is hilarious - and the performances are solid, but it just didn't  work well enough for me. It's not a complete wreck; more of a parking lot fender bender.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.