For Reel

Director: Edgar Wright

Director Edgar Wright is often praised for his precision with blocking and editing—in the Cornetto trilogy, his use of off-screen space, clever juxtapositions, and world-setting montages established him as one the few visually competent comedy directors working today. What many have failed to note, however, is Wright’s work with actors. In Baby Driver, gesture and character movement is as instrumental to the tone of the film as the editing patterns—Ansel Elgort is used as a handsome prop whose physicality and reactive timing both jives with the music and helps set the rhythm all on its own. For this reason, the gimmick that Baby Driver is relentlessly set to music feels almost incidental. Wright’s films, in terms of performance and visual style, already do feel rhythmic. Whereas music has a transformative effect on the pacing and emotional content of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films, for example, Baby Driver is not so much redefined by its soundtrack as it is a complement to something that is already present.