BABY DRIVER (2017) aka, the Edgar Wright/Ansel Elgort/Kevin Spacey/Jamie Foxx pop-song-and-car-chase Walter Hill homage(?)

not seen many of his films. TGE obvs. Not even sure I've seen Bullitt.

The whole 'this guy listens to headphones while driving fast cars' thing is such a naff gimmick that the film quasi-lampshades it several times. If it wasn't pulled off with: A. actually decent music picks; B. quality casting; C. great editing, it would fall right through. You could say pretty much the same thing about Drive, except I loathed Drive and I enjoyed this a fair bit.

xp

re: Hot Fuzz and "symmetric wank payoff", I believe the term you're looking for is "jokes"

That's why I said I wish this was PG-13 and less violent, that it tried harder to be funnier than it tried to be a convincing action movie. Which it wasn't.

Neanderthal - sorry for being a smartass, I was trying to dance around it, but it appears under a

SPOIIIIILLLLLLEEEERRRR

in the tenth post here, so: Doc tells Baby that he'll let him go after he pays off his debt, which we're primed to believe will never happen, and indeed when Baby's debt is paid off, Doc doesn't let him go. And then in a surprising twist, he does - and more!

https://filmability.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/ansel_elgort_en_baby_driver_1-imgo.gif

in the tenth post here, so: Doc tells Baby that he'll let him go after he pays off his debt, which we're primed to believe will never happen, and indeed when Baby's debt is paid off, Doc doesn't let him go. And then in a surprising twist, he does - and more!

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, July 24, 2017 2:31 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that didn't feel like a twist so much as a strange bit of nonsense. Unless of course he really was in love with Baby and on seeing Debora, he just thought 'screw it' and let him go?

when he says "I was in love once" or whatever he throws Baby a rueful look. Also, Spacey really digs calling him Baby.

yeah that's not really a twist because Doc never actually said he wouldn't have to do more jobs after he was paid up, that's how Baby interpreted it. but when Baby was confirming that he'd be out after the next job, Doc was careful with his words, he corrected Baby with something like "we'll be straight" which implied to me 'you won't owe me more money but I didn't say no more jobs'.

The twists were

Spacey not having double-crossed everybody. This was the clear setup, and while Wright might have been delighted to sell the audience this dummy he focused so much on what he wasn't going to do that what he ended up doing was sloppy, careless, messy.

Spacey taking pity on baby, lame move completely inconsistent with character so far and rendered an already lazily drawn and performed character even less interesting

Madman being the nutter out to kill baby

This movie had serious coherency issues and delighted in them.

Hope everyone involved dies, actually

I'm sure that some of the cops who got killed in Bats' shoot out turned up again in a later scene towards the end. Didn't understand that.

Xpost again, not twists, inconsistent plot points maybe but w/e.

I'm surprised people were saying this was like a nostalgia film or a 90s-retro film. Didn't feel particularly 90s to me?

Beyond iPods, Beck references, people making phone calls on landlines? Let alone all the post Tarantino winky riffs on violent action movies?

This owes nothing to Tarantino.

I would grab that emergency brake, spin out, then quickly back away from the word "nothing."

Didn't Wright write this movie way back when? Like 20 years ago? I assume that accounted for all the off-kilter references, like to Jon Spencer and Midnite Vultures-era Beck.

Anyway, if it was first devised 22 years ago, as Wright has claimed, that brings us back to 1995, which is peak post Pulp Fiction. Any action movie devised then was infused with Tarantino juice.

iPods didn't first come out til 2001 and a few seconds of someone making a call on a landline doesn't really scream NINETIES, or even particularly retro to me.
Guess the only bit that had me was the two stoner kids listening to Young MC.
The music seemed to be from all eras on there (lots of 70s stuff, so if 90s = 70s retro then fair enough). Didn't think it was particularly Tarantino-esque either, or at least no more so than any other action film that has absorbed Tarantino from the vernacular of action movies.

Yeah, I mean, that's fair. It's pretty movieland PoMo in its own right. But it definitely has the stylized too-cool-for-school crime violence, colorful criminals and romance thing going on, a la something like True Romance. All the diner stuff I kept thinking of Pulp Fiction, yeah, for surface reasons, but still.

BTW, lol at me that I can't even remember when iPods were introduced, and I was there!

Where were you picking up on Spacey double-crossing everyone, Darragh? That he always has new crews, or that he always has new crews apart from this one time? It passed me by but I can see the argument.

I think the crews was a ref to specifically the makeup of each one.

But

And I may not bother to remember detail or order correctly u understand

Foxx shoots up cops at weapons deal. Which may or may not have been a setup. We might not be meant to know either way but it had the air of stink before he acted. No explanation of why spacey wouldn't have dropped a hint as to the fact they'd be dirty cops which would seem cogent.

Dude weaponed up and ready to ambush the cru at the van holdup. Again, the direction, detail and the long looks we're given of this guy in advance of him turning into a have a go hero are all redolent of a plot thread that......goes nowhere? Never see him again.

Spacey's character has no thread we can follow that fits anything but a meta stooge wildly swinging the plot from one direction to the next, which I'm sure I've seen work when done well.

Foolishness to claim that my feeling that this was not done well validates or invalidates the unfollowed links of plot above, but what can I say? Didn't work for me at all once the bad guys became good guys and the good guys became bad guys and they all did the most stupid things possible in order to give us a messy conclusion after respective lifetimes spent as successful career criminals and fifty odd minutes of a pretty but pretty dumb driver dude ordering food in a diner.

I watched the trailer for this. Is the whole thing full of bad "Southern" accents like Lily James'?

that's all it is. just people doing bad southern accents at each other for an hour and a half

Great, I'm sold!

Any particular reason for thanks to Tarantino in the credits to Baby Driver?

— Paul (@reev0) June 27, 2017

He gave me car chase advice, general support and one cool script idea.

— edgarwright (@edgarwright) June 27, 2017

lol I guess it owes something to Tarantino

good god, I loved this movie but didn't give it much thought after I saw it. why so much hand-wringing? it was fun. i loved that he made tape collages. some cool music choices. short, fun, original script. GREAT! end of discussion...

We don't take kindly to fun round 'ere

You can't spell fun without FU.

Didn't earn the fun

"The movie's at the service of the soundtrack, I might argue"

Yeah I just came here to say it's a soundtrack in search of a movie. Violently meh. So meh that I'm somehow really mad at it. I passed up Valerian and Laureline for this drivel.

Andrew - yes, that's what I was referring to
Neanderthal - I was just using "twist" as shorthand. There was absolutely nothing apparent to me that docs character was suddenly gonna go all soft, esp when he's had baby in his debt since he was a kid and threatens his life. He didn't just let him off the hook - he let him off the hook after he fucked up a heist AND he got himself killed to save baby

This movie looked like it was totally gonna be my jam - but it just felt lame from beginning to end. Also I disliked all the music.

lol I only thought this was OK but it's several orders above Valerian xp

Atomic Blonde better not let me down like this

Also I disliked all the music.

― just1n3, Wednesday, 26 July 2017 02:11

!!!

*shrugs* it's just not the kind of music i particularly like

I wasn't into a lot of it but none of it seemed bad

Foxx shoots up cops at weapons deal. Which may or may not have been a setup. We might not be meant to know either way but it had the air of stink before he acted. No explanation of why spacey wouldn't have dropped a hint as to the fact they'd be dirty cops which would seem cogent.

Spacey's character doesn't go wildly in for explaining his actual business to the hired help

Dude weaponed up and ready to ambush the cru at the van holdup. Again, the direction, detail and the long looks we're given of this guy in advance of him turning into a have a go hero are all redolent of a plot thread that......goes nowhere? Never see him again.

This guy has nothing to do with Spacey, the cru, or the holdup. He's a random passer-by who keeps guns in his car bcz he's an ex-soldier nutbag and Georgia is an open carry state. We never see him again because we follow Baby, the titular character of the film, after the encounter, rather than branching off to follow this rando and examine his unhappy home life.

Agree that this film was a messy disappointment.

I'd lazily claim that that's all fine except for Wright clearly directing the movie to draw attn to these things then leave them dangling. That kind of chaotic confusion works in the tone of a Ronin or similar, for me it was smartypants messing in this one.

the first two times we see deborah she's rocking out to her own music, on her own headphones. baby's instantly drawn to her. a woman listening to her own music, that you can't hear, gives her a kind of power and independence, which is awesome, and it seems like baby responds to that, which is awesome. and then the movie just.. totally gives up on that dynamic. she knows more about music than he does (lol "trex") but somehow we end up with a "let me school you about music lil' girl" scene anyway. and then as noted upthread she just waits around in her ridiculously short costume dress in this impeccable, empty diner. where baby's blonde mom used to work! was anybody else just a liiitle bit skeeved out by that? just me? oh and she also pops up in baby's jimmy dean picture-postcard fantasies, draped over a mean set of wheels. it's so schematic that it's almost brechtian or something. it's absurd. but all played totally straight, no comment on the paper-thin pulp unrealness of it at all. which is maybe for the best, i dunno. it's a good point about the sickening violence of the climax feeling really out of place with the rest of it. i'd almost show it to my kids if it wasn't for kevin spacey getting graphically reversed over several times.

i really liked baby needing to rewind the song if something slowed down the heist, but it didn't add up to anything really?

lily james kept reminding me of a young jennifer jason leigh - the comparison didn't flatter her

but yes, i too am now in love with ansel elgort, i won't lie

oh and the movie i saw just prior to this, on the airplane, was guardians of the galaxy, whose hero also has a mother who died too young and left him an old cassette tape that he's willing to risk his life for. ??!

agree that spacey's turn at the end felt v lightly earned - and i was disappointed that baby never got to face him down. on the contrary, they became, like, buds!? after spacey set all this in motion and ruined his life? fuck outta here! hamm's just a random menacing heavy. i'm no expert in script mechanics but to this unfrozen caveman it was a fatal deflation of the stakes

I don't recall it being that violent.

the rebar thru jamie foxx was like nothing in the movie to that point. and for me spacey vs car was super gruesome

Glad to have u on board TH otm on each point

Many xps - I'm def not saying the music was bad, it just didn't do it for me

but yes, i too am now in love with ansel elgort, i won't lie

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand),

yeah...

I passed up Valerian and Laureline for this drivel.

― Conic section rebellion 44 (in orbit), Tuesday, July 25, 2017 8:23 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is infinitely better than Valerian lol