Baby Driver (15.)
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx. 113 mins.
Ansel Elgort is so baby faced, so gentle and nonthreatening, he's like a teddy bear that's received an all over Brazilian wax. In the 80s he'd have been a Corey (or a Cory.) To a manly man he looks so smooth you can't quite believe that anything in the form of genitalia would be allowed to blemish his physique. (Though being a manly man you wouldn't spend a moment contemplating Ansel Elgort's genitalia.) He's 6”3' but on screen his hulking frame doesn't carry any sense of threat or menace. So, all in all, he's a very strange choice for the lead in a crime thriller, even if he is only the getaway driver.
One of the great sins of the influence of Grand Theft Auto and the like, is that nobody takes crime, or crime dramas, seriously any more. All those great, grimy, sweaty, bar stool crime dramas about low life schemers and chancers based on novels by the likes of Elmore Leonard, have been pushed aside by over the top pyrotechnics. In Lock Stock, Dexter Fletcher has a line, “guns are for show, knives are for pros,” but these days everything is for show. A few years back the film Drive tried to reach back to that tradition and adapt it to the present day, but only came up with a cardboard cut out of a classic crime drama. Edgar Wright, still smarting from having had the Ant-man film taken from him (and then having it turn out great), has made something that genuinely brings the traditions of a classic crime drama into the modern age. Forty years ago they had Ryan O'Neal; now we have Elgort and we may have the better deal. Baby Driver does donuts around all the blockbusters out this summer.
Elgort's Baby is a man being forced to live a life that matches the excitement of the soundtrack he has created for it. Having fallen under the control of a bad man, Spacey, the only way he can deal with his existence is to choreograph it to the selection of music he has scattered on his various Ipods and mixtapes. The various criminal types who have him as their getaway driver think they have just been teamed up with Rainman.
The music is everything to this film. Like Guardians of the Galaxy, however much you enjoy watching the film on screen, playing the soundtrack on Youtube afterwards is the moment when you will fall in love with it. As is the way these days his musical choices are pointedly, almost incontinently eclectic – everything from Blur instrumentals to classic Stax soul, punk to the Beach Boys, Ennio Morricone to Queen. The stand out is Hocus Pocus by dutch prog rockers Focus.
In its own way Wright's film is as radical take on crime genre as Reservoir Dogs. Not as good, but it is trying to give it a new relevance, adapt it this modern age. Even when there is nothing happening there is always some kind of commotion going on. It is more sentimental than the crime drama of the old lags but that works for it. A little bit of heart at loose in the callous, grown up world of crime is quite affecting. And there is no irony here. Baby uses the music to insulate himself from his criminal actions but the film isn't flip or dismissive, it is funny, ferocious, thrilling, stylish, original and always in the correct proportions. Every element works to support the other. It's the perfect Millennial vision of a heist movie.
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx. 113 mins.
Ansel Elgort is so baby faced, so gentle and nonthreatening, he's like a teddy bear that's received an all over Brazilian wax. In the 80s he'd have been a Corey (or a Cory.) To a manly man he looks so smooth you can't quite believe that anything in the form of genitalia would be allowed to blemish his physique. (Though being a manly man you wouldn't spend a moment contemplating Ansel Elgort's genitalia.) He's 6”3' but on screen his hulking frame doesn't carry any sense of threat or menace. So, all in all, he's a very strange choice for the lead in a crime thriller, even if he is only the getaway driver.
One of the great sins of the influence of Grand Theft Auto and the like, is that nobody takes crime, or crime dramas, seriously any more. All those great, grimy, sweaty, bar stool crime dramas about low life schemers and chancers based on novels by the likes of Elmore Leonard, have been pushed aside by over the top pyrotechnics. In Lock Stock, Dexter Fletcher has a line, “guns are for show, knives are for pros,” but these days everything is for show. A few years back the film Drive tried to reach back to that tradition and adapt it to the present day, but only came up with a cardboard cut out of a classic crime drama. Edgar Wright, still smarting from having had the Ant-man film taken from him (and then having it turn out great), has made something that genuinely brings the traditions of a classic crime drama into the modern age. Forty years ago they had Ryan O'Neal; now we have Elgort and we may have the better deal. Baby Driver does donuts around all the blockbusters out this summer.
Elgort's Baby is a man being forced to live a life that matches the excitement of the soundtrack he has created for it. Having fallen under the control of a bad man, Spacey, the only way he can deal with his existence is to choreograph it to the selection of music he has scattered on his various Ipods and mixtapes. The various criminal types who have him as their getaway driver think they have just been teamed up with Rainman.
The music is everything to this film. Like Guardians of the Galaxy, however much you enjoy watching the film on screen, playing the soundtrack on Youtube afterwards is the moment when you will fall in love with it. As is the way these days his musical choices are pointedly, almost incontinently eclectic – everything from Blur instrumentals to classic Stax soul, punk to the Beach Boys, Ennio Morricone to Queen. The stand out is Hocus Pocus by dutch prog rockers Focus.
In its own way Wright's film is as radical take on crime genre as Reservoir Dogs. Not as good, but it is trying to give it a new relevance, adapt it this modern age. Even when there is nothing happening there is always some kind of commotion going on. It is more sentimental than the crime drama of the old lags but that works for it. A little bit of heart at loose in the callous, grown up world of crime is quite affecting. And there is no irony here. Baby uses the music to insulate himself from his criminal actions but the film isn't flip or dismissive, it is funny, ferocious, thrilling, stylish, original and always in the correct proportions. Every element works to support the other. It's the perfect Millennial vision of a heist movie.
