Choreography comes to car chases in Baby Driver. British director Edgar Wright’s benchmark blockbuster presents like Tarantino set to music. Nowhere to Run, Radar Love and Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up lead the 60s & 70s chestnuts that impart old-school cool into this new-school movie. Star power finishes the job.
A juke-box musical as much as a romance, drama or satire, Baby Driver is a consummate exercise in style. Nihilistic in the extreme, its inverse-ethics could have been drawn straight from Suicide Squad, sadly.
The baby driver himself delivers a star-making performance that is shockingly impressive. Learn to pronounce Ansel Elgort, because that name is gonna be atop movie posters for many years to come.
Lily James sweetly plays his diner darling. She’s British, yet is the sweetest All American girl ever. Wow.
The great Spacey sinks his teeth into a criminal mastermind role like a Doberman sinks his into a T-bone.
Couldn’t they have picked an attractive couple to make-out all the time? Hamm, handsome? González, hot? OK, suppose so. Him we knew about. She’s a find — smart, sharp & oh so sexy. Wow. More please.
Jukebox Jamie is more than up to the task of playing a hopped-up motherfucking criminal crew chief.
Edgar Wright has made lots of distinctive films, each reliably funny and pretty darn fun. Baby Driver tops ‘em all. It now heads up his oeuvre, easily outranking Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and the widely beloved Hot Fuzz. About that last, it’s not beloved by me, but beloved by many. Baby Driver? Beloved.
The collateral damage is no laughing matter.