{"id":4383,"date":"2017-06-28T10:17:45","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T17:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4383"},"modified":"2017-06-29T19:40:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T02:40:05","slug":"review-baby-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4383","title":{"rendered":"Review: BABY DRIVER"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"babydriver1\"\"fixbutton\"Baby\u2019s got a \u201chum in the drum.\u201d It\u2019s tinnitus, Doc (Kevin Spacey) explains while attempting to manage the potentially explosive personalities involved in planning his latest bank heist.\u00a0 Baby\u2019s also got skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaby Driver\u201d is a grandly entertaining bit of fantasy from the marvelous mind of Edgar Wright, the director whose films mix the magical with the tangible in unique and special ways.\u00a0 By toeing the line between pure fantasy and gritty crime elements, Wright manages to deliver thrills and make us care about Baby and his quest to be rid of a life of crime.<\/p>\n

Baby (Ansel Elgort from \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars\u201d) lost his parents at a young age in a devastating car accident.\u00a0 The collision left him with a continuous ringing in his ears.\u00a0 In order to cope with the noise, Baby listens to music.\u00a0 He has a different iPod loaded with music for any given mood or particular job\u2014theme music for a super criminal.\u00a0 As a getaway driver, equipped with the right soundtrack, Baby rocks the road like nobody else.\u00a0 This talent is particularly useful to Doc, a criminal mastermind.<\/p>\n

But Baby doesn\u2019t want a life of crime.\u00a0 As a petty car thief when he was a juvenile, Baby made the mistake of boosting Doc\u2019s car.\u00a0 And ever since, Baby has been forced to work off a sizable debt.\u00a0 But that debt isn\u2019t just about money. If Baby doesn\u2019t work for Doc, people will get hurt or worse. And when Baby finds love with sweet waitress Debora (Lily James), who helps him forget about his tragic past, he\u2019s determined more than ever to get on the straight and narrow. Of course, that means one last job.<\/p>\n

Writer\/director Wright succeeds here by placing eclectic casting choices in a familiar bank robbery narrative handled with such style and flair that it makes the material seem fresh.\u00a0 Aside from watching Spacey verbally spar with Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Eiza Gonz\u00e1lez, and Jamie Foxx, there is a sequence at the beginning of the film that is pure \u201cSingin’ in the Rain\u201d magic. It\u2019s a fantastic, absolutely fantastic car chase (the best of several in the film). Wright, whose films always have a musical element to them, pulls off a major coup by making \u201cBaby Driver\u201d a juke box musical that explains as its central conceit why music is integral to the story.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the hum in the drum that will have you humming along as Baby glides and slides both in a stolen car and while walking down the streets of Atlanta.\u00a0 The car chase scenes are superbly captured and each turn, reverse, and near miss perfectly occur to the beat of a pop tune.\u00a0 The effect is just spell-binding in the film\u2019s first third.<\/p>\n

But when the movie reaches its concluding act, things begin to get a little silly.\u00a0 Jon Hamm, who plays one of the deadly criminals, goes completely off the rails.\u00a0 In a sequence that feels very much like something ripped from Michael Mann\u2019s \u201cHeat,\u201d there\u2019s a lengthy bit of gun play on the streets, with running, shooting, and eventually driving.\u00a0 It works, for sure, but is not nearly as effective as the film\u2019s opening sequences.<\/p>\n

Still, I can\u2019t fault Wright for having trouble figuring out how to follow up scenes that will become cult classic bits of cinema history.\u00a0 He had a similar problem with his last movie \u201cThe World\u2019s End,\u201d but few really complained.\u00a0 And as Wright evolves as a filmmaker, his next challenge will be to transcend his own work and that means coming up with a way to sustain the magic.<\/p>\n

The cast will constantly keep you interested as the music continuously pumps to the action. The unique and sometimes fantastic \u201cBaby Driver\u201d should be the unlikely sleeper hit of an otherwise quiet summer blockbuster season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hum along for a Wild Ride<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4387,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions\/4387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}