A highly stylised, unusual blend of violence and music.
“Baby” is a decent young man (Ansel Elgort), who has got mixed up with criminals, working as a getaway driver for a criminal boss (Kevin Spacey). When he meets a waitress named Debora (Lily James), he vows to go straight and plans his escape with her. Of course it’s not that simple and his last job goes horribly wrong...
There’s so much more to this than a typical car-chase thriller. Baby is obsessed by music, which he plays on an iPod constantly to drown out both his tinnitus and memories of his mother’s death in a car crash. There’s also the fact that he records snippets of conversation and builds remixes out of them. And he has a deaf, disabled foster father to care for.
The film starts out like a pop video – fast, flashy and loud – but develops unexpected depths. The other criminals initially seem like two-dimensional caricatures, but thankfully they are developed too.
There’s a brilliantly executed scene near the beginning in which Baby brings a song to life, lip-syncing to it, and illustrating its lyrics with visual elements as he walks through the streets of Atlanta to the coffee shop.
I loved the soundtrack (The Damned, Bob & Earl, Sam & Dave, T.Rex, Jonathan Richman, Martha and The Vandellas, etc), and the choice of music is vital to the action. In places, the gunshots are synchronised to the rhythms of the tracks Baby listens to.
It escalates into a fast, thrilling and surprisingly intense climax.
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