The Showgirls of action films.

Rating: 5/10 (19 August 2017)

I had expectations of this film given the cast, hype and ratings on this and other sites, that it fell woefully short of, despite my misgivings having watched the trailer and the terrible baby driver gimmick.
Unlike the largely 17-year-old-and-under crowd that was in the cinema, I did not enjoy this film a great deal. It was a hodge-podge of style over substance. The dialogue was embarrassing, the characters generic and un-engaging, and the plot strictly by the numbers.
This film was trying to be brave putting music to action, and this was hyped up in some interviews, but this 'innervation' was done in black and white films 80+ years ago and seemed just as clunky and forced back then. In this film it ruined another meh action set piece.
This was ultimately a very average film with numerous failings that borrowed from earlier and better films such as Heat, La La Land, the films of John Waters/Tarantino, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Wild At Heart. This film borrowed from all these films to produce a mess that left me in bewilderment at numerous times, making it (for me at least) the Showgirls of action films. Just WTF was the director thinking? Why does everything have to be set in the 50's/80's/whenever - some mythical past where beatnicks listen to ipods, sing in the streets, and get out of prison in 1955 when they went in in 2017...
The Baby Driver gimmick was ultimately the least of the film's problems which I think 90% of the audience weren't even aware of.