Baby Driver ends up in the ditch.

Rating: 5/10 (8 July 2017)

With more than it's fair share of suspense and thrills this high intensity but somewhat far fetched heist film roars right out of the box, begins to sputter midway and breaks down in True Romance fashion by the credits. Talk about being taken for a ride.
Errand boy get away driver Baby (Ansel Elgort)has a severe hearing problem ameliorated by inspiring music that has him clicking on all cylinders whether picking up coffee or leading the chase; but it must be the right music. He owes big time to mobster Doc(Kevin Spacey) and is paying him back as a quirky wheel man that creeps out his cohorts. He finds a girl and wants out but Doc is not about to let that happen with over an hour to go of road mayhem and murder still on the meter.
One has to suspend a lot to get through this pile-up created by writer director Edgar Wright with characters lacking depth or consistency. Doc, the cold merciless brains doesn't show much of them when selecting psycho killers to pull jobs or at least be adorned in intimidating tattoos and making sure the "team" mix is at loggerheads in the planning stages. It gets even worse as Doc gets caught up in the cringing mawkishness that infects the film at its conclusion. Wright's free form absurdity extends of course to the Duracell battery villain (Jon Hamm in this case, Javier Bardem and Heath Ledger were actually given Oscars for their resilience in the past) a prerequisite these days for insipid films that move in and out of reality and constantly remind us we are watching a movie bordering on computer game. In one of the film's better chase scenes we have Baby on foot tortuously eluding police only to catch up with Houdini Hamm who has managed to extricate himself from being surrounded by cops over the same period. Gratuitous violence is plentiful but in Wright's hip world glossed over at trial and trumped by the fact he returned a woman's pocket book among other things allowing for our anti-hero to be out of jail in no time riding off in a 59 Chevy convertible with his girl in glorious black and white. The fact he participated in at least three brutal robberies resulting in multiple casualties and death is a non-issue in films of this ilk. Hence, the characters never progress beyond durable outline while the story remains repetitive, predictable and pretentious, its labored breathing depending heavily on pop nostalgia and the occasional rush of adrenaline with Baby at the wheel. Baby Driver is violent fluff.