Baby Driver

This movie (hopefully) will start a streak of amazing movies for this summer. A Ghost Story and Spiderman: Homecoming are next week, and War for the Planet of the Apes is the week after that (Hell yes for that last one.) Followed by Dunkirk drowning Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets in the box office, fingers crossed.

I went this morning to see Baby Driver and thoroughly enjoyed myself; the driving was awesome, and the music matched the action like a pair of Siamese twins holding hands. The actors also stood out, if a movie comes out with Kevin Spacey, Jamie Fox, and Jon Hamm you know it’s going to be an experience. Jon Bernthal was also great; he made sure that the audience remembered him even though his appearance was brief. Ansel Elgort, the main actor that played Baby, was very surprising to me, and I look forward to seeing him in future works (Except for Divergent series). All the acting, action, cinematography, directing, and music mixing with sound editing was spectacular, but what held the movie back was the one thing I focus on: Characters. Baby as a character was great, no doubt about it, but other characters, some of the bank robbers, were more of caricatures too busy being unique and looking cool to have organic emotions. The bank robbers that eluded this problem were Jon Hamm’s Buddy, and Jamie Fox’s Bats; both of them had a true moment with Baby that revealed to him the underbelly and consequences of the life he’s living as a get away driver. Now, it’s true that the story was on the focus of Baby’s perspective, and maybe that’s how he sees those bank robbers: cartoons with big guns and bigger mouths, but the one character that didn’t completely sell me was his girlfriend, the key element of the story's conflict.

She listened to music and looked cute. Great, that started a relationship, but it didn't evolve into anything more. Baby clearly had feelings for her and she the same, but the audience didn't get the connection as much. The girlfriend is the only lacking part of the movie, and she wasn’t even that bad. She was the reason why he wanted out of the business and the movie showed that visibly. She had moments where she proved she’s not a ‘damsel in distress’ either, but sometimes she seemed very helpless and stood in the background. Overall, I think Edgar Wright wanted his movie to be more than a ‘getaway driver wants out’ kind of movie, and he excels at that in his own unique style, so I was fine with him not putting his maximum effort on having a cute relationship between Oscar-worthy, fleshed-out characters. Not every movie needs award winning character development, sometimes the thrill of the action and plot are good enough to be enjoyable. This movie proved that.

Story Rating: 9/10

Character Rating: 7/10