Review #1,250: 'Baby Driver' (2017)

It feels like decades have passed since British writer/director Edgar Wright pulled away from Marvel's Ant-Man, apparently in fear of the studio's insistence on having the action take place within their Cinematic Universe and jeopardising his singular vision in the process. And it feels even longer since the underwhelming closure to the 'Cornetto Trilogy', 2013's The World's End, graced the big screen. But Wright has clearly been making the most of his spare time, finally completing the script for a movie that has been clattering around his head for over 20 years (he had the idea back in 1994). Drawing inspiration from a line in Simon & Garfunkel's song Baby Driver ("They call me baby driver, and once upon a pair of wheels," and a collection of his favourite petrol-head movies, he has delivered what is by far his most accomplished work to date.

Shortly before the release of Baby Driver, Wright hosted a film festival entitled 'Car Car Land' - a collection of his favourite car chase movies, featuring everything from William Friedkin's The French Connection to Walter Hill's The Driver. It has been quite rightly said that great cinematic action feels like a dance - elegant, brutal, and pieced together with delicate invention and skill. It is fitting that Wright named his festival after one of the finest musicals of recent times, La La Land. He has also taken this theory quite literally with Baby Driver, a movie as much at home with dazzling musical numbers as it is with high-speed pursuits and gun-fire, combining them beautifully without a hint of smugness. Our hero the getaway driver times his entire life to the beat ever-blasting into his ears from his loaded collection of iPods. A menial task such as making a sandwich becomes a toe-tapping dance number.

His name is Baby ("B-A-B-Y, Baby," as he confirms to practically everybody he meets), and his hipster blend of skinny jeans and sunglasses may have been grating without Ansel Elgort. Like Channing Tatum, his physicality and grace prevents you from taking your eyes off him once he starts to move, and cinematographer Bill Pope make sure to capture these moments in all their glory (including one terrific tracking shot at the start). Baby needs his music to block out the tinnitus constantly ringing in his ears, but also to remind him of the music-loving mother he lost in the very accident that caused his affliction. His short life has been spent in the debt of gangster Doc (Kevin Spacey), who employs the youngster's superhuman skills behind the wheel as a getaway driver for his ever-changing roster of low-life bank robbers. Each of them eye Baby with both curiosity and suspicion, when all he wants to do is pay off what he owes and leave town with adorable waitress Debora (Lily James). But one last job is never one last job.

Opening with a bank job that will leave you stunned at both the editing and choreography (no CGI is used), there's an early sense that Wight may have blown his load too early. But this only kicks off two hours in the hands of a craftsman who truly understand the mechanics of cinema. Not just action cinema, but musical and dramatic, and the film offers its fair share of belly laughs too. It's as much of an exaggerated world as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but contains itself in its own little world. The characters are larger-than-life but tangible, incredibly brought to life by the likes of Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez and Jon Bernthal. There's an almost ever-present soundtrack, with the characters speaking and moving in sync with the rhythm, which lend the film a unique energy. When the music stops and the soundtrack screeches to reflect Baby's tinnitus, we long to be thrown straight back into Wright's fantasy world. The car chases, the love story, the testosterone-fuelled exchanges - there's nothing new here, but Edgar Wright knows this. Baby Driver is so swaggeringly confident and stylishly hypnotic that it becomes a genre film like no other, causing most other action movies to hang their heads in shame.


Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza González, Jon Bernthal
Country: UK/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #681: 'The World's End' (2013)

Finally wrapping up the collection of films now known as the 'Three Flavours Conetto' trilogy, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright have delved into sci-fi geekdom for inspiration for their final entry, The World's End. Where Shaun of the Dead (2004) was a swan-song to George A. Romero and his gift of zombies to the horror genre and Hot Fuzz (2007) was a homage to 1980's and 1990's action movies when the law were still cool, The World's End gives us a blue-blooded alien/robot invasion, reminiscent of John Carpenter, set amidst a legendary pub crawl.

Gary King (Pegg), a middle-aged alcoholic, decides that he and his childhood friends should meet up one more time to complete the pub crawl they failed to conquer twenty something years ago. The crawl consists of 12 pubs in their hometown of Newton Haven, ending at The World's End pub. Gary quickly gathers up the gang - Oliver "O-Man"Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), and, somewhat reluctantly, Andy Knightley (Frost) - and they set off on their quest only to discover that the town they grew up in has become overrun by pod people-type robots.

The thing that made the previous two films in the trilogy so enjoyable was the chemistry between its two leads, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. In Shaun, they were both bumbling idiots, and in Fuzz, the dynamic was changed to keep things interesting, with Pegg playing the straight man, and Frost his starry-eyed but worryingly dim sidekick. Here, things are changed again with Frost becoming the straight man and Pegg the loutish idiot. Frost's Andy drinks water for the majority of the film and holds resentment for an unspoken event, therefore heightening the drama and adding dimensions to their relationship, but nevertheless steps on the comedy. With the chemistry missing, Pegg's Gary becomes slightly annoying and Andy is just a drag.

And here lies The World's End biggest problem - it just isn't that funny. Until the robots show up, there are only a handful of scenes capable of raising a smile, and the movie is actually quite slow. Shaun and Fuzz (this will be the last time I mention these, I promise) were packed full of visual and wordplay gags that benefited from repeat viewings, but The World's End was such a drag the first time around that I doubt will ever feel the need to watch it again. The supporting cast barely register, with only Considine's Steven getting a sub-plot, involving Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) and some unspoken love.

But when the robots show up, the movie does pick up the pace. Although it's hardly a ground-breaking idea (it's pretty much The Body Snatchers with lager), watching Nick Frost twat a horde of robots with two bar stools could never be anything but thrilling. Most of the charm of the film comes from it's distinctive Britishness, and the out-there climax offers a surprisingly insightful commentary on what it means to be British - flaws, belligerence and all. These are some relatively minor achievements that manage to save the film from disaster, in what is ultimately a disappointing, unconvincing closing bookmark to what could have been a modern landmark in British comedy.


Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Pierce Brosnan, David Bradley, Michael Smiley
Country: UK

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie