← Back to Reviews
in
A young man reluctantly works as a getaway driver for a local crime boss and runs into trouble when he tries to quit.
Walter Hill's Streets of Fire justified its hyper-realistic mix of rock stars and street gangs by describing it as a "rock-'n'-roll fable" that belonged to another time and place. That's as good a means as any to describe Edgar Wright's blend of car chases and non-stop music, which owes obvious inspiration to Hill films like Streets of Fire and The Driver. The narrative is extremely archetypal with its tale of a young man (Ansel Elgort) who's forced to play wheelman for a tough-talking kingpin (Kevin Spacey) in order to pay off a long-standing debt. Throw in a charming waitress (Lily James), a lovable foster father (CJ Jones), and a handful of crazy crooks (Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Eiza Gonzalez) and there's enough of a story upon which Wright can build all manner of cinematic magnificence. The hook for this very familiar-sounding set-up is that Elgort's driver constantly uses iPods and earphones to drown out the tinnitus he acquired from a childhood accident, which leads to him soundtracking every moment of his life with whatever music he can find. As a result, every scene from simple exposition to high-speed pursuit plays out in tightly-edited synchronicity with the soundtrack - and it rules.
You can definitely take the film to task for relying on its cast to flesh out some rather slight characters (with James making the best of what little material she has to work with as Elgort's love interest), but such a talented ensemble has the chemistry to make it work even without Wright's notoriously precise sense of cinematic rhythm guiding each scene's timing down to the second. It's certainly in Wright's thematic wheelhouse with its tale of a protagonist whose attempt to treat his life as a happy-go-lucky joyride (often by using music less as a passion and more as a coping mechanism) are ultimately thrown into sharp relief by the world and people around him - there's nothing too elaborate here, but there are enough little touches (such as a tender relationship with his deaf-mute foster father) that make Elgort and his journey as well-rounded as those of any other Wright protagonist. It's certainly enough to add the requisite amount of depth and emotion to a series of tightly-wound set-pieces that don't necessarily depend on the nothing-but-deep-cuts soundtrack to function properly but just wouldn't be the same without such a perfect pulse. It's a marvel of practical techniques that will make you notice the craftsmanship in all the right ways. Time will tell how it sits within Wright's already-formidable filmography, but a film like this demands that you recognise its power in the now - and it doesn't get much more high-powered than this.
BABY DRIVER
Edgar Wright, 2017
Edgar Wright, 2017
A young man reluctantly works as a getaway driver for a local crime boss and runs into trouble when he tries to quit.
Walter Hill's Streets of Fire justified its hyper-realistic mix of rock stars and street gangs by describing it as a "rock-'n'-roll fable" that belonged to another time and place. That's as good a means as any to describe Edgar Wright's blend of car chases and non-stop music, which owes obvious inspiration to Hill films like Streets of Fire and The Driver. The narrative is extremely archetypal with its tale of a young man (Ansel Elgort) who's forced to play wheelman for a tough-talking kingpin (Kevin Spacey) in order to pay off a long-standing debt. Throw in a charming waitress (Lily James), a lovable foster father (CJ Jones), and a handful of crazy crooks (Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Eiza Gonzalez) and there's enough of a story upon which Wright can build all manner of cinematic magnificence. The hook for this very familiar-sounding set-up is that Elgort's driver constantly uses iPods and earphones to drown out the tinnitus he acquired from a childhood accident, which leads to him soundtracking every moment of his life with whatever music he can find. As a result, every scene from simple exposition to high-speed pursuit plays out in tightly-edited synchronicity with the soundtrack - and it rules.
You can definitely take the film to task for relying on its cast to flesh out some rather slight characters (with James making the best of what little material she has to work with as Elgort's love interest), but such a talented ensemble has the chemistry to make it work even without Wright's notoriously precise sense of cinematic rhythm guiding each scene's timing down to the second. It's certainly in Wright's thematic wheelhouse with its tale of a protagonist whose attempt to treat his life as a happy-go-lucky joyride (often by using music less as a passion and more as a coping mechanism) are ultimately thrown into sharp relief by the world and people around him - there's nothing too elaborate here, but there are enough little touches (such as a tender relationship with his deaf-mute foster father) that make Elgort and his journey as well-rounded as those of any other Wright protagonist. It's certainly enough to add the requisite amount of depth and emotion to a series of tightly-wound set-pieces that don't necessarily depend on the nothing-but-deep-cuts soundtrack to function properly but just wouldn't be the same without such a perfect pulse. It's a marvel of practical techniques that will make you notice the craftsmanship in all the right ways. Time will tell how it sits within Wright's already-formidable filmography, but a film like this demands that you recognise its power in the now - and it doesn't get much more high-powered than this.