Bland and generic heist film with nice visual tics

Rating: 3/10 (30 October 2017)

Edgar Wright riffs on Nicolas Winding Refn's 'Drive' but packages it for teenage audiences who like things to happen faster and with less logic. Once you scratch beneath the shiny surface of 'Baby Driver', what you are likely to find is a totally unremarkable (sometimes nonsensical) story elevated by its director's hyper-energetic visuals and an all-star cast.
It was probably a mistake to throw the young (and rather charisma- free) Ansel Elgort up against such a strong ensemble of far more experienced and talented veterans like Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. These guys are all on their A-game here, even if their characters have walked straight out of the storage warehouse for Heist Crew Members For Hire. Elgort is, frankly, a bore to watch on screen which is made worse by the fact that he is playing a man of few words. Lily James, as his love interest, is equally as dull. In that respect, they are a match made in dreary young actor heaven. Almost all of their scenes together are a slog, not to mention that their romance is totally unconvincing, and that is a fundamental problem because their love story should be the emotional throughline of the piece, helping to raise the stakes and anchor our sympathies. It is a failure of both the bland lead casting and unimaginative writing.
The soundtrack choices and Wright's trademark visual tics help to boost the momentum of individual scenes and set-pieces, but Wright cannot disguise the lack of invention elsewhere in his storytelling, no matter how convoluted and haphazard the plotting gets. This is so generic and familiar at almost every stage that nothing comes as a surprise and only minor quirks in character behaviour and dialogue set it apart. Haunted hero with a tragic past? Check. One last job? Check. Heist goes wrong? Check. Macho bravado creates conflict within the crew? Check. Hero's helpless love interest threatened? Check. It is a smorgasbord of crime film clichés and tropes, without much attempts at subversion. Even the car chases look pretty standard in a time when franchises like 'Fast & Furious' have already cranked things up to Spinal Tap-levels of 11.
This is the very definition of style over substance and its complete lack of originality and reliance on the oldest clichés in the book make it an overall disappointment. One could argue that 'Baby Driver' is a celebration of cinematic crime stories, from 'The Driver' to 'Point Break', and if that is indeed the case, then I'm sorry to say that Edgar's party sucks.