Edgar Wright is just about the perfect 21st-century genre director as
he proves yet again in his thrillingly movie Baby Driver. The senselessness of
human nature is his subject, genre the lens through which he studies it. Ansel
Elgort plays the title character, the designated driver for a crime boss who
calls himself Doc (Kevin Spacey). Members of Doc’s crime teams change, but
there always seems to be one paranoid hothead who gets edgy because Baby never
talks and always has headphones on. Is he a mute? Is he slow? No, but Baby has
a hell of a story involving a car crash and juvenile robbery that put him in
Doc’s debt. As the movie begins, he’s on the verge of paying off that debt and
becoming free.
Referencing Walter Hill’s 1978 The Driver with Ryan O’Neal, the title
character is one of those ultra cool existentialists who defines himself
through action. Baby has a little more inner life. There’s none of the
smash-cut spatial incoherence of most modern action sequences. Wright’s chase
scenes are wild but classical and elegant. He also doesn’t care for the
green-screen, computer-generated unreality of the Fast and Furious series. This
is the first thriller we’ve seen in a long time that feels handmade.
In the grand tapestry of Daniel Day-Lewis’ acting career, Phantom
Thread will be sewn in as a colorful swatch, though for a retirement role, he
leaves us wanting a little more.
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