Style Will Only Get a Movie So Far

Rating: 4/10 (25 July 2017)

One of the more disappointing films I've seen recently, because it starts out so promisingly and so its eventual down-hill trajectory seems all the more steep in comparison.
"Baby Driver" has one of the best opening credits sequences I've ever seen, some kinetic and whiplash car chases, and an awesome soundtrack. In its main protagonist, played pretty winningly by Ansel Elgort, it also has an engaging and sympathetic character -- or at least, he starts out that way, until he becomes an empty cipher for director Edgar Wright's fetishistic preoccupations, a problem that plagues the entire movie.
The early scenes of Baby finishing his life of crime and meeting a cute girl are the film's best. But the energetic pop and fizz of the movie quickly curdles after that into a tedious and juvenile barrage of non- stop violence and implausibility. If Wright had established a satiric tone like he did in movies like "Hot Fuzz" and "Shaun of the Dead," I might have been able to tolerate the film's descent into stupidity. But he doesn't, instead playing things straight, so that characters like the ones played by Jamie Foxx and John Hamm (who's badly miscast by the way) become so obnoxious and irritating that I groaned every time they reentered the film. We're supposed to believe that Baby has a heart of gold and is a victim of circumstance, but by the end of the film he's as ruthless as anyone else and can kill with the same casual ease as the bad guys, so we kind of stop caring about him. And the movie can never be forgiven for what it does with his love interest, a completely disposable character who blindly follows Baby even after she's seen him kill a man and who exists for the sole purpose of being rescued. I haven't seen such a worthless female character in a film in a long time.
The only other bright spot aside from the ones I've already mentioned is Kevin Spacey, who knows how to play a bad guy as someone who you know is only going to bring grief to the characters you care about but who you want in the movie anyway because he knows how to be sinister and likable at the same time.
Style will only get you so far.
Grade: C-