Movie Review—Baby Driver

Baby Driver

by Peter J. O’Connell   

Baby Driver. Released: June 2017. Runtime: 113 mins. MPAA Rating: R for violence and language throughout.

With Baby Driver writer/director Edgar Wright delivers an instant cult classic. The movie has all the right attributes: cast a mix of seasoned thesps and young up-and-comers; Tarantinoesque ultraviolence and snarky dialogue; obsessed Lynchian characters; car chases and crashes a la the Fast and Furious franchise, except even more spectacular and rather more realistic; a deep structure whose ancestry is rooted in film noir of the 1940s and ‘50s. And, notably, the film has a brilliantly unique use of music, simultaneously diegetic and non-diegetic—a character (Baby) continually listens to diverse music from the 1960s to the present, music that constitutes the soundtrack of the movie and in various ways reflects or comments upon the action. Sometimes everything happening on the screen, in effect, moves in rhythm with the music that both Baby—and the audience—hears. (The music includes the eponymous Simon and Garfunkel tune “Baby Driver.”)

Baby-faced Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a young man in Atlanta working as a getaway driver for Doc (Kevin Spacey), a criminal mastermind who specializes in meticulously planned heists. Baby is working for Doc only until he can pay off a debt. Because Baby seldom speaks but listens to music on iPods all the time, one of Doc’s crew asks: “Is he slow?” Doc explains: “He had an accident when he was a kid. Still has a hum in the drum. Plays music to drown it out. And that’s what makes him the best.”

There’s more to it than tinnitus, though. Baby started listening to music as a young child in order to drown out his father’s abuse of his mother, a singer. Following his mother’s death in an auto accident—caused by abuse and with Baby in the car--the youngster began to function as if he had PTSD or, perhaps, the combination of social awkwardness with great facility in a specific field—in his case driving—seen in autistic savants. Baby does, however, have a warm relationship with his elderly foster father (C.J. Jones), a deaf mute whom he takes care of tenderly and who gives him good advice. Baby also encounters a super-sweet waitress, Debora (Lily James), in a diner, with whom he falls in love and she with him.

But Baby has difficult relationships with Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Bats (Jamie Fox), two key members of Doc’s crew. Their violent propensities create a tense atmosphere even when the gang is not carrying out its heists and deals.

Baby and Debora hope to hit the road to the West, but there’s that “one more job” for Doc. Moviegoers know how that kind of job usually turns out. Baby Driver handles the job with tricky twists and turns, in and out of cars—though, perhaps, a few too many climaxes. In any case, it’s a cool thrill to ride along--even in a theatre seat--with Elgort as Baby and the rest of a topnotch cast on a summer’s day or evening.

“Footnote” to the film: Another fairly recent movie featuring a possibly autistic getaway driver is Drive (2011), starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.