Baby Driver Is Accelerating To New Heights

Rating: 8/10 (13 October 2018)

Baby Driver, directed by Edgar Wright, starring Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, and Jamie Foxx: tells the story about the life of our main character, Baby. Baby likes to make music with people's conversations that he hears, he's partially deaf, and he's an exceptional escape driver for criminals because he's trying to pay off a debt that he owes to a crime boss named Doc, played by Kevin Spacey. Baby was also traumatized as a child due to being in a car crash that killed both his parents. He copes with this by listening to music to tune out his past and becoming extremely skillful at driving. For a while, Baby makes a good amount of money and almost pays off his debt, but then he meets a girl named Deborah who is played by Lily James, in which all goes downhill from there. Baby Driver displays masterful cinematography in its action scenes and an excellent soundtrack that compliments the mood of each one. This combination will leave any moviegoer wanting more.
To start off, Baby Driver's opening scene already sets up the level of camerawork quality to be expected of the entire film. As Baby's crew of criminals begins their raid on the bank, Baby is busy jamming out to a song he's listening to. The camera pans around him, displaying him singing and tapping the steering wheel as the song plays. When the car escape scene actually starts, the superb camera work is presented to the audience. What makes the cinematography so great is the variety and quality of the angles the car chase is filmed from. Different scenes that show different perceptions of the chase without being over the top really make this action segment seem real and makes you genuinely feel the tension of the scene. Later in the movie, there's a running chase scene that includes Baby escaping from a heist. The camera work is really good here because even though the action is chaotic with a lot of events occurring, the camera doesn't shake excessively. A common action movie flaw is the amount of camera shaking that occurs. While camera shaking does make some scenes feel more intense, too much camera shaking can make someone dizzy or blur the scene, making it difficult to watch. The transitions in this particular action scene are impressive and creative as well, as there's a section where policemen are chasing Baby down a hallway and the camera has a view from the side. Every time the camera is blocked by a pillar in the hall, it switches to a side view of the policemen and then it cuts back to Baby. The cinematography of the movie overall makes the viewer appreciate how well executed the action scenes are in the movie.
While action scenes being executed well is a major factor in whether a movie is good or not, the soundtrack is equally as important. A soundtrack can make a mediocre action scene into a great one due to adding background sound that keeps the movie watcher interested. An action scene such as car chase would have noise like cars crashing, horns being honked, and the sound of bullets hitting the car. While that's not a bad thing, these noises can become repetitive, and even boring. In order to fix that, adding a soundtrack that compliments the scene enhances it by a considerable amount. However, a soundtrack that is overbearing can totally ruin an action scene as well. Music should be complimenting an action scene and the tone it creates; it shouldn't be forcing a tone onto the watcher. In Baby Driver, the music doesn't overwhelm the audience, but instead fits perfectly with the action. The music in Baby Driver isn't creating the tone; it's enhancing the tone that already has been established. One of the other additional soundtrack features that the movie includes is the syncing of the action scenes with the music. Gunshots and bullets hitting their target are all synced to the beat of the instrumental. This adds to the enhancing of the scene, as the soundtrack is directly interacting with the action. Also, this form of syncing is generally hard to pull off because if it's done wrong, it can completely ruin the pace of a scene if the syncing is too forced.
One of the reviews I've read for Baby Driver states that "Baby Driver is a worse Fast and the Furious." First of all, The Fast and the Furious does not come close to the level of cinematography Baby Driver possesses. The Furious movies all rely on over the top action scenes to compensate for the lack of variety and substance behind their car chases. For example, the most recent Furious movie shows a car escaping from being harpooned by five other cars, then it's back to a normal car chase. The camera angles that the Furious movies use are repetitive and boring due to how basic they are. The level of quality that the Furious series has been cultivating for many years was surpassed the moment Baby Driver hit theaters.
Baby Driver's cinematography and soundtrack make the movie into an amazing experience that any watcher will be satisfied by going to. The multiple intricacies in the movie's creation really add to the overall quality of the movie, and it makes the average moviegoer really appreciate the amount of work that goes into it. Whether it's a car chase or an on foot chase, Baby Driver makes a masterpiece out of it.