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Edgar Wright made his name co-writing and directing crowd-pleasing parody films with Simon Pegg — think “Shaun of the Dead” or “Hot Fuzz.”
Wright goes it alone for his latest super action spree. The effect isn’t as much quirky fun as, say, “The World’s End” (Wright’s last collaboration with Pegg), but “Baby Driver” does possess the contained zippy tone of the [many] carefully curated three-minute pop songs that Wright uses to energize his car chase crime thriller with a poppy romantic underbelly.
“Baby Driver” runs on a jukebox of cool music that runs the gambit from Jonathan Richman (“Egyptian Reggae”) and The Damned (“Neat Neat Neat”) to R&B shag tunes from the likes of The Commodores (“Easy”) and Barry White (“Never, Never Gone Give Ya Up”).
The soundtrack may be better than the movie. Sure, there are some exciting chase sequences, but even those get old.
The film’s pacing goes slack during a few too many heist planning meetings, led by Kevin Spacey’s criminal kingpin Doc. Still, newcomer Ansel Elgort smears on enough stoic charisma as the film’s title [getaway driver] character to mask at least some of the film’s unsightly nuts and bolts.
Wright seems to be taking notes from Quentin Tarantino for his use of pop music to provide an aural bed of energy for the story to glide on. The problem is that Edgar Wright isn’t anywhere near as gifted as Tarantino when it comes to crafting plot and dialogue. Here is a fluffy little crime thriller where gunshots keep time with the music.
Film editors Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss needed to take a few more passes before setting this thing free on an unsuspecting public whose patience will be tested by this film’s end. There’s a reason all those “three-minute” pop songs are so good; they seldom go over three minutes.
Rated R. 113 mins.
