Baby Driver is far more important to director Edgar Wright than many people may believe it to be. Obviously, it was his fifth film released and was also one that was praised by the public and critics, but it was his passion project way back in 1995 when he was still a struggling filmmaker. Getting inspiration from albums like Orange by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, incorporating various music related intricacies into the story like the neuroscience of music, and even managing to create a proof of concept for the movie when he developed the music video for Mint Royale’s ‘’Blue Song’’ which is structured incredibly closely to the opening of the film in style and cinematography. With his rise to fame and more movies under his belt, he was finally able to get his magnum opus on the screen in 2017. Baby Driver focuses on a young man weirdly named Baby (played by Ansel Elgort). His job is being the driver for a crime boss (played by Kevin Spacey), getting them to and from their choice of robbery with precise movement and trickery. However, when he meets the girl of his dreams, a waitress named Deborah (played by Lily James) and after being hounded and threatened by the thuggish lifestyle of his colleagues, mainly a crazed loose cannon named Bats (played by Jamie Foxx), Baby has to try and find a way out of his lifestyle without being caught by his own team. This is very clearly a movie that is dear to Edgar Wright’s heart and it seems to have turned out well for him with the film doing pretty well critically and even being nominated for a few academy awards. This goodwill and passion are heavily admirable but is not fully able to cover up a good chunk of this film’s real problems.

The movie would have worked wonderfully as a short movie; the concept feels like it could draw people in enough and the small length would allow for more focus on action and visuals rather than dialogue and story. But since the film is a full-length picture, it means that it does suffer from the limitations of its concept. The premise works well in terms of constructing the film; the presentation and craftsmanship for the film is very detailed, very impressive, and full of care and precise timing. But this leaves the narrative structure feeling pretty limited and downright generic; this film seems to have a lot of similarities to the 2011 movie, Drive starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan which also focused on an individual stuck within a criminal workforce as a driver being pulled from the harsh life by a love interest but being unable to escape it so easily. But while that film knew to make the focus on the main character and have a bit more story, this film is so engrossed within its style and visuals, it doesn’t offer up anything of  interest, coherent or even that different. The movie slugs to a massive halt in the second half after a serviceably paced first when the clichés get more apparent and the excuses for flashy imagery becomes more important than narrative. With Edgar Wright usually sticking to products with simple concepts, characters and clichés, this movie needed a bit more complexity and uniqueness in order to really flesh out this nice but one-trick concept.

With a badly told story also comes poorly constructed characters, and these characters are not well defined, memorable, or even properly set up. Starting with the main focus, Baby is not a good main lead; he is every typical nice guy in bad situation trope without much separating him from the bunch. His personality is pretty lacking, his backstory and disability is promising but not utilized strongly enough to leave an impact, and his passive nature and lack of a character arc prevent the audience from fully being engrossed by him. The side characters feel like they are trying to be weird and quirky like a Tarantino film would try to write them, but they lack that memorability and punchiness that Tarantino usually incorporated into his films. Because of the film’s attempt to place it in real-life with real world restrictions, there is a big chunk of charm removed from characters like his other films that can be a bit more extreme like the Cornetto trilogy and Ant Man. Everybody’s acting is pretty decent but doesn’t help to turn the characters into something stronger and doesn’t let them go outside their normal comfort zones; Ansel Elgort is fine but not really a leading man. Lily James is in a very similar park, Kevin Spacey does his usually stuff, Jamie Foxx is fun but a bit one note and Jon Hamm is not a very good bad guy, especially with how out of nowhere the movie decides to make him one.

The film’s strongest element is in the way its presented and staged, the careful planning and intricate handling of everything behind the scenes clearly shows that Wright wanted this film to turn out well. The cinematography for the movie is pretty good; the normal scenes are shot well, and the faster moments of action are usually well paced and stitched together. The editing for the film is especially good with how it likes to time the cuts of the shots with specific sounds or actions within the film calls back to his other work like Hot Fuzz which also had top notch editing. The driving scenes in the movie are done well enough with some cool stunts and clear enough visuals to make it so that its not hard to witness any of the action, but it’s nothing mind-blowing in terms of car-action, trying more to play it safe and realistic rather than going that extra nice level of crazy fun that people can suspend their minds too. This movie soundtrack is massive, and it is a clear sign that music is a strong topic within the film. On the surface, this allows for a lot of classic songs that people can get into both new and old and can even use it within the story is a nice way with the inclusion of a music-oriented deafness disorder that explains its large inclusion. With that said, the soundtrack can be a bit overstuffed with songs that either are too obvious with their messaging of scenes or not relevant enough to really warrant their inclusion. Trying to weave it in is nice, but unlike other films where the soundtrack seems to flow into the movie nicely without being overly prominent, this one comes across as too obvious and steals focus away from certain scenes.

Baby Driver is a good example of a director’s determination and drive to get a project off the ground that they can hold very personal in their hearts. Movies like that are often far more endearing than ones where the project is just made to sell merchandise or to over-exploit a franchise and for that, the film still turns out decently enough despite its flaws. The film needed to update itself a bit more than its initial concept and further its ideas into more than just a generic gangster movie with a strong soundtrack. The film will deliver some nicely composed shots and scenes along with some decent actors and enough of a fun style that at least warrants a watch just to get the experience. Not perfect and not as strong as some of his other work, but with enough pros to warrant a notice, crash on in and see if Baby Driver catches your attention.