Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Baby Driver

I originally thought about seeing this the day I went and watched Wonder Woman, but I didn't. It's fine, I guess. The driving sequences are fun. The fact Jon Hamm's character won't just stay dead, or at least stay down, gets a little tiring. It's almost a horror movie thing after awhile. "What, again with this guy?"

It's just, everybody except the main character seems a little too much. Like they're a 9, and they need to be at 7. Jamie Foxx in particular. Although I wasn't clear why, if Kevin Spacey's character always uses different crews for each heist (except his driver), why he brought Jamie Foxx back for two gigs in a row. At that point, you have 50% of your crew from the last heist on the current heist, so it isn't really a different crew, is it? Especially since Foxx' character is so damn trigger-happy. You want things to go smoothly, or you want them to go '80s action movie?

But maybe that's necessary because the lead (Ansel Elgort) is so understated. He looks fairly cool when he has the shades on, but when he isn't wearing them, the fact he's always concentrating trying to read people's lips makes him have this squinty, absurd look on his face.

(Come to think of it, that's probably the face I have when I try to make sure someone I'm walking towards isn't saying something to me that I'm not hearing. I don't know how often it happens, but I know the combination of being half-deaf and all lost in my thoughts means people will say something to me and I don't even realize it until after I've walked past.)

I think he's supposed to be slightly awkward, and he is, while being a wonder as a driver. He just didn't make much of an impression with all these other people chewing scenery around him.

2 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

The best thing about Baby Driver is the bits where they match action choreography to music; it's not something we've seen often -- if at all -- in cinema before, and it's wonderful to see.

The problem is that after the opening credits and the first action sequence, there aren't any new ideas. That's all you get.

So you may as well just watch the original music video that Edgar Wright used as the basis of the idea.

CalvinPitt said...

Some ideas are better left to three minute music videos, I guess.