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"Baby Driver" is the Coolest Movie You Will See this Summer: Review

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Film Review: Baby Driver

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 The latest film from director Edgar Wright, Baby Driver is the perfect summer movie. Slick, stylish, and action-packed, Baby Driver soars with a rhythmic energy other movies can only dream of achieving. It stars Ansel Elgort as Baby, the getaway driver for an Atlanta crime boss (Kevin Spacey), who longs for a fresh start, out of the criminal world. As he discovers, getting out is harder than it seems. 

 Baby Driver features some of the most engaging car chase sequences I have ever seen on film. Unlike the CGI-heavy ugly spectacles of most modern action movies, the chases in Baby Driver  look and feel distinctive and unique. Wright's screenplay, while not groundbreaking, is incredibly sharp and can be quite funny at times. A lot of movies have great soundtracks, few of those movies use their soundtracks as effectively as Baby Driver.  Baby is rarely without his earbuds, as he uses music to drown out the tinnitus he's suffered from since childhood. We hear what Baby hears, putting us in his head, and without any dialogue, tells us so much about how he experiences the world around him. 

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The cast is another high point of the film. For Elgort, this is a great start at distancing himself from the trash sick-lit adaption that was The Fault in Our Stars. Spacey brings glacial precision to the role of the crime boss Baby is indebted to. Lily James plays Debora, a diner waitress and Baby's love interest, with just enough off-kilter appeal to make their love story seem plausible and worth caring about. Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Eiza González are all fantastic as colorful fellow bank robbers, especially Foxx who gets some of the film's funniest lines. 

 Baby Driver doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. In a lot of ways, it's a straightforward crime movie, owing greatly to the movies that came before it, namely Walter Hill's The Driver. But Wright has remixed just enough the components (the soundtrack, the man-of-few-words archetype, the supporting players) for it to feel fresh and worthy of your time. Depending on how much you like action movies, you may feel the movie goes on for slightly too long. For me, this would be the perfect 90 minute movie. But even at 112 minutes, it's still pretty great. 

 What did YOU think of Baby Driver? Let me know in the comments below!
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