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Baby Driver

Started by Pete Wells, 08 July, 2017, 09:13:04 AM

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Pete Wells

Blimey, I went to see this last night and it was stunning! I've always enjoyed Edgar Wright's work and this was just genius! How they choreographed and edited this and (pretty much) sustained it for and hour and a half is beyond me.

If you don't know the premise, Baby is an insanely talented getaway driver who suffers from tinnitus. He constantly has music pumping through his iPod to drown out the constant ringing in his ears.  The contemporary music he listens too pretty much constantly matches, or foreshadows, what's happening onscreen. This gets right down to lyrics graffitied on the walls as he walks along the street, strong drumbeats matching insane shootouts or even placing of heist items on a table matching the rhythm of a song. It sounds like an awful recommendation, but the thing plays out like one long music video; a really clever, stylish, engaging music video. I watched some scenes with my jaw practically on the floor. 

The performances by all the cast are great. There are some really nasty and funny heist members and Baby himself shows really satisfying character development. It was one of those movies that me and my friends excited discusses all the way home, each spotting or hearing different little details.

This is a cinema experience that I would very, very highly recommend.

Mattofthespurs

Saw it last week.
Very much enjoyed it but thought the final third of the fill sagged as the first 2 thirds had all the best bits.
Not to say it wasn't great. It's a solid 8/10 imo.

matty_ae

Completely agree.

It's a fabulous night out with amazing visuals. I was in a multi-age audience and they loved it.

Loses the originality touch in the final reel and turns into a bit of a genre film but that's a slight criticism of a very well made piece of work.

See it before Spider-Man (which I also liked)

dweezil2

Yeah, that final act sure let it down, still worth a watch though.
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Keef Monkey

Not sure what looks awful about it, I thought even the trailers were very stylish.

It's a fantastic film, I can see where some of the complaints come in about the last act but I still found that chunk very thrilling. Loved it, and looking forward to a few more watches, Edgar Wright has a knack for making movies I'll rewatch a billion times.

Arkwright99

My daughter loved Baby Driver (said she hadn't seen a film that made her feel so many different emotions during its course) and my nephew apparently thinks it's great as well but I'm afraid I was less enamoured of it. I wouldn't say it was a bad film but I wouldn't rate it more than 3/5.

I'm not an Edgar Wright groupie so I'm probably approaching Baby Driver from the wrong starting point but the script's dialogue really failed to 'zing' for me (when I asked my daughter to quote one memorable line from the film the only one she could remember came from Monsters, Inc.) and for a film about bank heists/cars I found the editing somewhat flat and felt it could have been pacier. I accept it won't be a popularly held position but snappier editing as used at the start of Quantum of Solace would have sat better with me.

I wish more had been made of Baby's tinnitus; it's mentioned as the reason he listens to music but beyond that it didn't really 'do anything' in the film in terms of impacting Baby's life. The way Kevin Spacey's Doc does an abrupt volte-face in the final reel is a complete betrayal of his character as delineated up to that point but then, narratively, Baby Driver isn't really a heist film or action movie. It takes all its tropes from the musical genre and in that respect it's closer to La-La Land than Fast & Furious. As I say, not a bad film per se but I wouldn't buy the Bluray even in a sale.
'Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel ... with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.' - Alan Moore

radiator

Saw it tonight. Overall I really enjoyed it, but agree with the criticisms; it's weirdly front-loaded in that the first hour or so is just pure movie magic, it seems to be building to a crescendo, and then (imo) it just kind of unravels and limps to a protacted and kind of silly ending, which is a real shame.

But that first hour is worth the price of admission alone, it really is terrific. It's like a great music video that just keeps going. Well worth seeing on the big screen.

Mattofthespurs

Quote from: Arkwright99 on 14 July, 2017, 02:05:50 PM
I accept it won't be a popularly held position but snappier editing as used at the start of Quantum of Solace would have sat better with me.

I hated, absolutely loathed, the editing at the start of Quantum of Solace.