Stylish

Rating: 9/10 (9 May 2018)

"Baby" is a getaway driver for teams put together by crime boss Doc. He plays music on his iPod constantly in order to drown out the tinnitus which resulted from the car accident in which his parents died. He lives with his elderly, infirm, deaf foster father, and is only doing the driving until he has paid off a debt to Doc. Certain members of the crime crews have extremely negative reactions to his constant wearing headphones. When Baby falls for waitress Debora and vice versa, he decides he wants to get out of the game and run away with her. But Doc has other ideas, and hostile Bats is a complete wild card.
In some respects, Baby Driver is a completely routine crime thriller, but Edgar Wright as writer and director brings a sense of style to it which we don't see very often. Given Wright's involvement with the Simon Pegg Cornetto trilogy movies, one might expect comedy here. Well, it's not nihilistically dark, but neither is it packed with laughs. But it is always involving.
Baby speaks little and is ostensibly rather bland, and Ansel Elgort portrays this well. Towards the start there is an extended moving camera shot as Baby takes coffee to a planning meeting, and the movement and sound editing tell you as much about Baby's character as you need to know thus far. There is a LOT of music in this movie, and all of it well chosen. Lily James as Debora is gorgeous - I wanted to run away with her too. Kevin Spacey plays Doc as an odd mixture of mincing and paternal: it works, but it's odd. And Jamie Foxx as Bats is vile. I was very please when what happened to him happened to him.
The developments towards the end aren't always what you expect, and the ending certainly isn't. But It's fair, and I liked it, and all the loose ends are nicely tied up.
I enjoyed this, and it promises great things in the future from Edgar Wright.