Baby Driver (15) | Home Ents Review
Dir. Edgar Wright, UK/US, 2017, 113 min
Cast: Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Eiza González, Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx
Review by Carol Allen
A combination of action movie and musical, this is the best music video you’ve ever seen – but with an original story to boot.
Baby (Ansel Elgort) is the Baby Driver of the title. Two things define his life. His love of music, which he plays constantly through headphones to drown out the tinnitus he suffers from as the result of a childhood accident. And the other is his driving skills – this Baby can make a car dance and almost fly.
Baby’s driving skills have been hijacked by manipulative gang boss Doc (Spacey – calmly villainous), who uses him as the getaway driver on his various jobs. Baby wants out, particularly since he has met and fallen in love with Debora (Lily James), who shares his love of music. But Doc won’t let him go. Also on hand are the gang members, who include Hamm and Gonzalez as a loving couple, latter day tattooed Bonnie and Clyde – towards the end of the film Hamm, as a very different sort of “mad man”, comes impressively into his own. Plus Jamie Foxx as another gang member who is literally mad and a delightful performance from C.J. Jones, as Baby’s deaf foster father Joseph, with whom Baby communicates through dance plus signing and lip-reading.
Very different form Wright’s smaller British hit comedies, such as “Shaun of the Dead” and “The World’s End”, this marks a big creative advance for this talented writer/director. It is fast paced and brilliantly made. The filming and editing is choreographed to the lavish amount of music, the car chases are more than somewhat breathtaking and although violent at times, Elgort and the film itself are both charming and romantic.
The DVD also features a generous amount of “making of” extras, including shot by shot commentary from Wright and his cinematographer, Bill Pope, plus features on the shooting of the car chases, the casting and of course the music. All of which make it also a useful learning tool for any wannabe film makers.
Available on Digital download, 4K Ultra HD/Blue-ray, HD/Blue-ray and DVD
