Nearly disappointed

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2019)

One of the problems of not watching a film soon after it was released (and hearing a lot of positive praise about it in the meantime!) is that you expect it to be absolutely amazing. I like (writer/director) Edgar Wright's other work (i.e. 'the Cornetto trilogy' - Google it if you don't get the reference!), plus I'm a fan of slick heist films and the actors on display here, so I figured that this would be the film for me. And it was. But only just.
'Baby' is a young (18-21 year old, I'm guessing - I don't think his age was ever officially disclosed) man who has a natural gift at stealing cars and then driving them away at high speed. He's currently working for a criminal mastermind, but only to 'work off a debt' - after that he's gone. However, the criminal life is never that straight forward.
I was about 20-30 minutes in and I was really contemplating turning it off! Yes, Wright's style and direction is uber-slick and a joy to watch. The cast was shaping up nicely to be as good as advertised and the dialogue wasn't that bad either. The problem was 'Baby' himself (Ansel Elgort). We soon learn that he doesn't talk too much, mainly because he deliberately excludes himself from conversations by plugging himself into his personal musical device. However, later we learn there is a deeper meaning behind this. I've never seen the actor before, so I can't comment on how good he normally is, but here (with pretty much the entire film resting on his young shoulders) he just doesn't seem that charismatic to really carry the film (especially when he's hampered by being practically mute for long periods of time). Worse still, he started coming across as rather smug with these weird little 'song and dance' numbers that were particularly noticable in the first half of the film.
Luckily, when the tension starts to mount, Baby seems to glide into being the 'leading man' a little more. There is - the obligatory - romance element, which does seem a little forced and, believe it or not, the film would probably have been just as good without it. But, what really makes it is the cast. If you have seen Jon Bernthal's name attached, don't get your hopes up - his scenes are almost just an extended cameo. The 'real' stars are the ever excellent Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. They're long-standing appeal and screen presence saves the film and picks up and slack left by Elgort's inexperience with shouldering the burden of an entire film's weight.
I have read a couple of reviews which stated that the film is a 'film of two halves.' I can agree with that completely, although many of the other reviews seem to like the first half and say that it then fell apart in the second. I was the other way around - I was bored with the first half and then found that when the action picked up around the midway mark, everything got a lot better. The chases and car stunts are excellent and worth watching on their own, plus there's a little kid that totally steals the show - pity he's in it even less than Jon Bernthal! Overall, I'm glad I watched the film and stuck with it. If there is a major fault it's that it feels about 10-15 minutes too long. I reckon you could have cut down the romance element and made it a tighter film.