Baby Driver Film Review – by Rafael H Year 10 the Film Baby Driver
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Baby Driver Film Review – By Rafael H Year 10 The film Baby Driver, directed by Edgar Wright, is a truly original film, set to an utterly amazing soundtrack. Although the film may feature many heist clichés, for example, ‘one last job’, it manages to keep the audience entertained throughout the film. The film itself could almost be called a musical, with almost every scene set to music that the main character is listening to. Edgar Wright, the man behind Sean of the Dead and the rest of the Cornetto Trilogy, uses many of his classic camera styles to create a visual masterpiece. An example of this is the opening scene, where the lead character, Baby, does not say a single word, yet we, as the audience, know a lot about his character. Without saying a single word, we can already tell that he turns a blind eye to the life of crime he is leading and how he is an extremely skilled driver. The next scene is a long shot of Baby, played by Ansel Elgort, going to collect coffee for his boss, played by Kevin Spacey. His whole journey is set to the song Harlem Shuffle, I you pay attention to the graffiti behind Baby whilst he is walking, you would notice that words in the song are subtly painted behind him. This is what makes Edgar Wright’s films so incredible, his attention to detail. For example, the ‘mise-en-scene’ in this film is particularly impressive. Specifically, the use of colour and costuming for the main characters. Baby is mainly dressed in black and white throughout the film, this connotes his conflicting personality, his Ying and Yang. His life has two sides, a good and a bad. His good side is with Deborah and his foster father Joseph. His dark side is obviously his criminal side. This colour coding is not just for Baby, but for most of the characters. For instance, Deborah, the female lead played by Lily James, is also wearing black and white, but for different reasons, I think that she wears black and white to parallel the ending of the film, which has the two main characters reuniting in black and white. As well as this, Batz wears red to connote violence and aggression, Doc wears green to symbolise greed and Buddy is mostly in blue until Darling is killed and he then is shown in a red light showing his anger. I could expand a lot more on the details in this film, but that is not why I wanted to review this film. For me there was only one flaw to this film, one which did not affect me until recent events had been brought into view. The fact that a major character, Doc, had been played by a certain infamous actor named Kevin Spacey. Now I will not mention the terrible things that this man may have done but considering the recent allegations I feel less compelled to watch this incredible movie again, to the point where I even turned it off. Many people say you need to separate the actor from the performance and enjoy the movie in its own right. This is a fair thing to say, as it would be a real shame to let one man’s actions ruin a great film would. However, it does concern me that I could be condoning the environment that Hollywood has allowed to happen. Thankfully, by buying the film money is not given to Spacey, but to the good hardworking people who created it. Unfortunately, for me, it is extremely difficult to enjoy this film as much as I did when first viewing it in the cinema given recent events. By Rafael Solimeno-Harris .