Took the hype with a grain of salt

Rating: 4/10 (10 June 2019)

And I was still disappointed. I expected a lot of the bad stuff that has been pointed out in reviews, but I was very intrigued about the use of music. Most people seemed to agree that the soundtrack, and the use of it, were great.
They really weren't.
Throughout the film I felt like I was forced to listen to some self-indulgent hipster's spotify playlist. Too many songs sound so similar that it feels like the same songs playing over and over. There were lots of lesser known tracks, with the exception of a few well matured hits. That would be fine, except the tracks were poorly chosen, namely the ones for the actions scenes, which were all fast tempo, garage sounding, monotonous rock songs, that together with the sound effects made for a messy background noise for the action. They just lacked the punch and energy that this film really needed. It was more of an irritation than anything satisfying.
The editing and sound editing, although technically great, were nonetheless tiring. The gimmick of syncing gun shots and visual edits to the beat of the music gets old pretty fast. They tried to make it subtle at times, and not spam it too much, but it's there enough to actually become quite restricting in the end. Sound effects and visuals were forced right on-beat, which takes a lot of fluidity out of the action. Everything followed the music in a very rigid, lifeless manner, like someone practicing to a metronome. There's not much musical ingenuity here, with the exception of one scene where a shootout makes for a sort of a percussion interlude to "Tequila". That was good.
It could have been great, if the music was better selected to pace the action. The timing gimmick could have been used in a more musically creative way too, like gun shots creating jazzy and funky drum fills, instead of every gear shift, head shake, or door slam landing on a percussion strike.
So the couple of things this movie is mainly praised for were a let down for me. I get the sense that the music in the film is the directors personal list of all time best songs, instead of carefully selected for it. I've seen people write things like "Killer soundtrack", or "Best movie soundtrack ever". No. Come on. It's just a mixtape made by someone trying to be cool. I have these songs in spotify playlists as well. It's not an achievement.