Anyone who’s been unable to start a road trip (or even get out of bed) until they have just the right song cued up will be on the right wavelength for director Edgar Wright’s delirious new feature, Baby Driver. The film centers on Baby (Ansel Elgort) a fresh-faced getaway driver who drowns out his accident-related tinnitus with earbuds thumping an always-on personal soundtrack. He’s the best wheel man in Atlanta, but most of his heist earnings go to pay off a debt to cold-blooded armed robbery mastermind Doc (Kevin Spacey).
Baby Driver’s plot is an up-tempo mix tape of crime-picture clichés, centering on Baby’s efforts to pull One Last Job. He might be an outlaw at heart, but he’s no hardened criminal. There’s a girl, of course: Deborah (Lily James), a sweet-as-honey waitress who shares Baby’s passion for old R&B but knows nothing of his illicit vocation. Baby is devising an exit strategy for the pair of them, but this doesn’t sit well with Doc and the other underworld heavies on his holdup crew, including a thrill-seeking Bonnie and Clyde (Jon Hamm and Eiza González) and a volatile triggerman with a death wish (Jamie Foxx).
The film finds its energy by filtering these tropes through the toe-tapping, rump-shaking beats of Baby’s music. Just as La La Land’s characters understood the world through Hollywood musicals and those in Wright’s own Scott Pilgrim vs. the World did so through comics and video games, Baby Driver is rooted in the compulsion to curate the perfect playlist for every moment. The film offers plenty that addicts of fast and furious heist pictures will drool over, most conspicuously some jaw-dropping practical automotive stunts. But Baby Driver’s purest thrill is the one that surges when real life magically syncs up with the stereo in a feedback loop of audio-kinetic bliss.
Opens Friday, June 30 in wide release.
