Thursday, July 13, 2017

Film Review - Baby Driver (2017)

Baby Driver is the new film by Edgar Wright and stars Ansel Elgort as Baby a young getaway driver who suffers from Tinnitus and plays music to drown out the ringing after working for a local mob boss (Kevin Spacey) he vows to go straight and take his new girlfriend Deborah (Lily James) with him.

I was so keen for this movie mainly due to it being Wright’s new film as I love and adore the 3 Cornetto films he made so anything he made I was always up for but could this pour on the petrol for another winner or would it burnout in the way I felt his Scott Pilgrim film did.

Happily it was the former as I really enjoyed this movie and I have to start at the top with Edgar Wright himself and his direction as it is fantastic and this movie very much reminded me of a film Tony Scott would’ve made in the early 90s when he made Days of Thunder, Revenge, The Last Boy Scout and True Romance and his direction, editing, staging, use of music and sound and chase scenes were all outstanding and it is very much the mark of a man who has studied films all his life and has grown in confidence to set his own style and not treat his audience like mugs.

The supporting cast are also terrific here, Spacey makes for an effective villain and chews up Wright’s fast paced style like a pro, Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Jamie Foxx and Eiza Gonzalez are also very good as the other hitmen Baby works for and Lily James from Cinderella makes for a very likeable love interest combining both the dreamer role in La La Land with the Patricia Arquette character from True Romance.

Where this movie does fall over a little sad to say is with Elgort himself don’t get me wrong he’s fine but again like with Scott Pilgrim it just made me miss Simon Pegg all the more and also I began to think that perhaps Pegg was the secret ingredient to the success of the Cornetto series and that without him as his leading man there is a big hole left at the centre that capable actors can try and fill but perhaps not fill it enough.

And so that was Baby Driver which despite Elgort is a really fun film, 3 and a half out of 5.

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