First Remarkable Film of 2017

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2017)

So Baby Driver is great and if you have not already seen it you should.
We'll expand on that thought in a moment, but first your critic is going to whine about tangentially related personal problems. I just snuck this bit of actual substance in first so you would not justifiably skip the remainder of the review after reading the next paragraph.
Undergoing a bit of an existential crisis. 2017 seems unremarkable thus far, full of 5/10 movies that with spin I could justify a point one way or another. Sure, there are the annually under-appreciated foreign and art-house releases, but nothing hype in the mainstream, nothing worth sharing with friends. So all my reviews just seemed to rain on people's parades. Where is the nobility in criticism? Is Wonder Woman really a disaster? Am I just completely out of touch?
So the Wonder Woman draft got tossed (This kid has drafts? If he felt good enough to share this, imagine what he scrapped). An opinion no one was waiting for or wanted to hear. The greater loss was of spirit. I had just polished a 30,000 word essay and was eyeing the recycle bin like deranged writers of decades past, glowering at their roaring fireplace. My toil was narcissistic expressionism and I was ready to surrender. Scene set, enter salvation.
Baby Driver is the first movie of 2017 that I am going to remember come 2018. A genre picture, but auteur Edgar Wright subverts tropes and our expectations more subtly than in any of his past efforts. If there were any qualms that Wrights direction was geared toward niche fanboys, this is the proof otherwise. So please, don't let Baby Driver just be my personal deliverance.
I don't think a plot synopsis is going to be useful. Time better spent figuring what exactly is Baby Driver. Comparison is the standard method, but this only works so well. Baby Driver is a heist film. A car chase film. Draws influence from those 90's L.A. crime films. And the 70's classic The Driver, well Baby Driver borrows far more than just a cameo. Baby Driver feels familiar, but easily proved distinct from any film it feels linked to. Obviously the archetype for the cold dominating mastermind Doc (Spacey) can be seen past films. So can the child in denial Buddy (Hamm), his enabler Darling (Gonzalez), and the cunning, furious, dangerous Bat (Foxx). Of course there is One Last Job. But this is a heist film where we are not permitted to watch a single heist. A car film where the music is just as important as the chase. A L.A. crime thriller set in Atlanta.
So what do we have here? We have Baby (Elgort). A getaway driver that does not seem to belong in the criminal world, or maybe any world. Baby is withdrawn, sunglasses and earbuds are constant fixtures. Watch how he bumps into every pedestrian as he dances through the streets (in one long shot). His compatriots question if he even hears the plan, but Baby is just trying to cope, a vulnerable soul in a brutal line of work. His favorite tool is his omnipresent assorted music. More than just a soundtrack, Edgar Wright described Baby Driver as a "car musical." It's a cute description, although more a quip for critics to regurgitate than accurate observation, but does emphasize how sequences are defined by their music. It is impossible to describe the first chase without mentioning the song "Bellbottoms." However, unlike in your typical musicals, the world does not start and stop for a song. It's all naturally integrated. Baby uses music to smother his surroundings, logically it would play a major role in our perspective. Almost any sound track this loud and in your face would be overkill, a blunder, but just like Baby, Edgar Wright has style while remaining utterly unpretentious. Wright utilizes cinematic technique that in other films would be called distracting or unnecessary, but when everything is in place and the flow is unquestionable. With music like this, the setting cannot be L.A., it absolutely has to be Atlanta. All the musician cameos, justified. The name on Baby's birth certificate? I won't spoil, but there is only one perfect answer.
Baby Driver just kills. The critics love it, my friends love it, I love it, and I love talking about it. I shouldn't hope, but I pray a film so zany, so early in the year, so not set in L.A. can steal an Oscar or at least a nom. Academy approval of Baby Driver or not, you can be sure six months down the road I will be writing about the decision.