Baby Driver

(Warning: contains spoilers for Baby Driver)

In The Mysterious Cities of Gold (an 80s cartoon that I am wary of revisiting in case I discover it was complete tosh, despite having one of the best theme tunes ever), main characters Estaban and Zia both possess interlocking parts of a gold medallion.  When those two parts come together, it unlocks the eponymous Cities of Gold, filled with wonders and riches.

Similar things happen when Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg work together.  There is a weird alchemy and synchronicity between the two - the same knowledge, the same vision - and gold is spun.  That gold looks like Spaced and The Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, World's End).  When separated, audiences are left with nuggets of the purest green...(Paul, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, Absolutely Anything [where Simon Pegg is the lead character])

But both Wright and Pegg have generated enough good will between them that audiences will still risk the price of a cinema ticket to see if the next project will be green or gold.  This summer we test Baby Driver.

Conceived by Wright in 1994, the film is the story of Baby (Ansel Elgort) who works as the getaway driver for a varying group of bank robbers led by kingpin Doc (Kevin Spacey) in order to pay off a debt.  Suffering with tinnitus, he relies on music to soundtrack his life, dictate his mood, and tune out some of the underlying auditory condition.  When not driving or sitting in corners, he looks after his deaf foster father (CJ Jones), falls in love with Debora (Lily James) and occasionally thinks about his deceased biological mum (Sky Ferreira).  Baby wants out of the heist life, Doc dangles the carrot of "just one more job".  Baby discovers that business (life with Doc) and pleasure (life with Debora) don't mix.  Hijinks ensue.

Straight off the mark, this looks and sounds like an Edgar Wright film.  Catchy soundtrack over a number of sharply shot and executed set pieces.  The opening 6 minutes can be found here, and gives a pretty accurate flavour of the mood of the film.  Personally, I preferred the following sequence where Baby is sent out to get the coffee and everything is perfectly synchronised to the music he is listening to and the mood he is in (with a nice call back later in the film when things are not going right for him, and nothing seems to "work").  Although it's set in America, and all the characters appear to be American, it feels very "British".

Some characters and relationships are very well realised - I very quickly liked the relationship between Baby and Joseph, which simultaneously felt like a relationship of peers, as well having a parent/child relationship.  The short hand of their routines, and the fluidity of their sign language to each other was another great visual element of things working well in Baby's life.  I would have happily watched a film solely about these two.

Best relationship in the film

But other characters felt a lot flatter.  Bats (Jamie Foxx) and Griff (John Bernthal) felt that they had no existence outside of their scenes.  Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) - while enjoyable - felt like a retread of Pumpkin and Honey Bunny in Pulp Fiction.  I find it difficult to comment objectively on Spacey's performances - I can't see past him just being Kevin Spacey.  In particular, this felt like his Frank Underwood - vaguely genial front, deadpan, not to be messed with.  that said, Spacey does seem to have his diversity quotient in order for all his henchmen.  There's a wide range of BAME roles at play here.  As for Debora, I could understand why she and Baby would fancy each other, but I wasn't convinced that she would give up everything to be with him.  Yes, it was because there was nothing else going on in her life, but that in itself just adds to the argument that she's a fairly 2-dimensional character.  Everything we learn about her, we learn from other characters telling us about her.

The film itself lasts about 20 minutes too long, and becomes somewhat cartoony in its ending.  I struggle with films where the boundaries and consequences are unclear, and in the final showdown between Baby and Buddy, Buddy goes from being a mere mortal to being unkillable (after being beaten up, AND hit by a car AND set on fire).  And though I appreciated that there were consequences to his actions (Baby goes to prison after breaking the law, BUT his positive actions are taken into consideration), the coda of Baby and Debora's reunion felt a little stuck on.

Why won't you die?

Where this film should be championed is in its challenging of assumptions of disability.  The majority of characters - on their first meeting of Baby - make assumptions about him.  That he is not listening or that he has some form of disability (leading to the "is he retarded?" exchange between Griff and Doc).  Pleasingly, Doc never feels the need to explain Baby to anyone but does challenge their assumptions ("Retarded means slow.  Was he slow?" queries Doc after an all-out adrenalin rush of a car chase).  For the most part, Baby is given opportunity to explain himself at his own pace to whomever he chooses.  Baby proves time and again that not saying much does not mean there's a problem.

As mentioned previously, one of the strongest relationships is between Baby and Joseph.  Joseph is deaf and the two communicate by sign language (can anyone else think of any other examples of a non-white actor with a disability in a mainstream film?).  The sign language itself is part of the aesthetic of the film - it's not just there to be functional.  Wright's direction of that sign language speaks (poor use of wording there) volumes about the relationship between Joseph and Baby, adds wit, adds warmth, adds familiarity.  A massive well done on that front.  Now just Wright (ha!) some better women.

Additional thoughts, comments and questions.

1.  Kevin Spacey as Doc enters the pantheon of actors over 50 who unexpectedly take on action roles (see also: Liam Neeson - Taken, Colin Firth - Kingsman).

2.  Ansel Elgort learned sign language for his role in this film.

3.  Baby Driver is not a good title for a film.

4.  Here's the theme tune to the Mysterious Cities of Gold.