For many, the measure of a good movie is its rewatchability. I recall being disappointed by many a film upon my first viewing in the movie theater, but I don’t know if I have ever been disappointed on a rewatch…until now. Edgar Wright’s “Baby Driver” received my praise for the entire latter half of Summer 2017, but revisiting it this week showed me just how imprudent my acclaim was.
“Baby Driver” takes us into the dark world of crime alongside Baby (Ansel Elgort), a highly-skilled getaway driver employed by Doc (Kevin Spacey), the bank robbery Godfather. Baby is in Doc’s oppressive grip until he can pay him back for a cash-carrying car that Baby stole when he was younger; Baby pays off Doc, and seeing the imminent freedom from his life of crime at last, gets an honest job and meets a girl he can finally be with — Debora, the singing waitress (Lily James). The plot thickens when Baby is pulled back into “one last job” with Bats (Jamie Foxx), Buddy (Jon Hamm), and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) but goes south, and puts Baby and his few loved ones at high risk.
What was so disappointing about rewatching this movie was, first of all, that I remembered it being so good the first time around. I recall being mesmerized, totally enthralled by every element from the music to the acting. This was not at all how it held up on the rewatch, however. “Baby Driver” did only enough to capture me once, inside the theater. The problem here is not each individual element (soundtrack, acting, editing, script, etc, are all fairly good taken by themselves), but it’s when they attempt to work together that the plot feels flimsy and awkward — not completely unlike Ansel Elgort’s dancing. When all these elements try to work together, “Baby Driver” becomes a movie that does not know what it’s about because it tries to be about too many things. You can feel that it’s about music, family, romance, honesty, freedom, crime, justice, and fate, but that’s already one too many themes to keep track of, especially when they each take turns screaming out their presence at different points in the story.
While most of Wright’s film is fun — gratuitous pop music, exciting heists, funny quips, and some delightfully intense scenes (the crime crew visiting Debora at her diner is my personal favorite) — it inevitably implodes on itself and ends up flat after the rushed last act. There’s high stakes and extreme violence in its final third, but this is awkwardly interrupted by the occasional intimate moment between Baby and his loved ones that just serves to improperly tie up some emotional loose ends. So many things happen in the final half hour that I found myself just wanting it to be over; it even lacks a satisfying finale for all the trouble it took us through in 113 minutes of runtime; the vague intentions of Debora and Baby ultimately yield no satisfaction in the viewer when they seem to get what they want in the end. We are meant to be deeply connected to the couple, but all the convoluted action stifles any emotion that the film has left to give and makes dull what should’ve been a cathartic redemption.
Though heist scenes like the opening chase are some of the most thrilling we’ve seen in a while, “Baby Driver” lulls whenever Baby is not driving; a lot of the non-violent scenes could surely be more engaging, believable, and — many times — just plain shorter. Considered Wright’s “passion project” by many, I could not help sadly long for what might have been had he managed to perfectly merge all these fine elements into one powerful story.
