Baby Driver (2017)

Baby Driver (2017): written and directed by Edgar Wright; starring Ansel Elgort (Baby), Jon Hamm (Buddy), Eliza Gonzalez (Darling), Lily James (Debora), Kevin Spacey (Doc), CJ Jones (Joseph), Jamie Foxx (Bats), and Paul Williams (The Butcher): It's my least favourite of the movies Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) has directed. That still makes it pretty good. Baby Driver, named for a Paul Simon song, is slathered in songs. Our hero, 20ish guy 'Baby,' drives the getaway cars for a heist operation run by Kevin Spacey. He doesn't want to, but he's stuck. When 15, Baby stole a car loaded with stolen property from Spacey. He's been paying it off ever since.

How are the car-chase scenes? Very good. Anedgar wrightd the conceit that Baby listens to music constantly to drown out the tinnitus suffered in the car accident that killed his parents means, well, a nearly constant, eclectic flow of pop music. Wright gives Baby a couple of interesting quirks -- most notably a deaf African-American foster father whose existence, and Baby's mastery of American Sign Language, tells us that Baby is All Right. Lily James plays Baby's cute-as-a-button diner-waitress love interest, labouring away in the world's (or at least Atlanta's) largest yet most empty diner ever.

The improbably named Ansel Elgort seems to have been intentionally selected for his sweet, occasionally blank niceness. I don't know that it entirely works. He's often overpowered by the other actors, most notably the acerbic Spacey, a mercurial Jamie Foxx, and Jon Hamm as The Terminator. Wright nods to one classic 'Driver' film, The Driver (1978), directed by Walter Hill, by casting Hill in a cameo. One is also reminded of the more recent, excellent Drive with Ryan Gosling as a preternaturally cool heist driver. In all, Baby Driver is an enjoyable entertainment, the sort of summer movie that used to be more common before the Rise of the Tentpoles. Recommended.