Critics reviews

For this unhip viewer, who preferred a stodgy Emily Dickinson biopic to this totally awesome genre flick, the whole thing veers from bad to unforgivable in the romantic subplot involving the beautiful waitress (Lily James) who may or may not have an inner life but nevertheless falls head over heels for the in-every-way-uninteresting Baby, and who stands by her man despite hell, high water, or years of imprisonment.

It's finally most apt that Wright's final image returns to fantasy realised as a reunited Baby and Debora drive off in a roadster, pop cinema and pop music returning back to the roots on some dusty southern back road. It might not prove the best film of the year, and yet Baby Driver left me with the feeling that it might well be the only one they'll be teaching in film schools in twenty years.

While it might be too simplistic to say that Wright generates the technical pyrotechnics and Pegg supplies the soul, the flaws of Baby Driver hint that this equation roughly adds up... Its greatest liability is its screenplay: the filmmaker's first-ever fully solo effort in this area. Baby Driver is so poorly written on levels of plot, characterization and (especially) dialogue that Wright's typically first-rate craftsmanship fails to save it—and, in context, even becomes its own source of annoyance.

When a foot chase looks like a dance or a speeding car syncs up with the soundtrack, that's fun to watch. When Paul Williams lists off cuts of meat or an aerial shot looks down at a cloverleaf interchange, that's pleasurable filmmaking. But those are only bits and pieces of this semi-ironic heist saga. The rest is too nice to its hero and too hung up on a secondhand notion of "cool" already played out by the mid-'90s.

Wright's apparent commercial success in his enterprise ("Baby Driver" sold thirty million dollars' worth of tickets in its opening weekend) contrasts with—and perhaps depends on—a conspicuous lack of artistic vision. "Baby Driver" plays like a Disneyfied version of an action film—rated R for, I suppose, its sanitized violence and middle-school cussing. Wright's sense of style is movement in quantity rather than in detail.

No one has better captured the pleasure of walking while listening to pop music [than Edgar Wright]. Baby Driver begins with a breathtaking car chase through Atlanta, but the credit sequence that follows, in which Baby, getaway driver for a shuffling pack of thieves, goes round the corner and back to buy coffee, all in one shot, is almost as dazzling. Everything moves to the beat, and the street itself has been modified to match the music as the camera tracks along it.

The countless musical sequences, which seem like an experiment to see how many songs can be crammed into one film, do a damn good job of evoking that great teenage fantasy of the cosmos perfectly choreographing itself to the sound in your headphones.

The hero is music mad and skilled at the wheel, which befits a movie powered by fast cars, a throbbing soundtrack, syncopated dialogue, and balletic violence. Oozing menace as addicted bank robbers, Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm are all the more charismatic thanks to Bill Pope's luscious noir photography. Credit Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss for the razor-sharp editing, and look for a cameo by director Walter Hill, whose 1978 thriller The Driver helped inspire this sleek exploitation flick.

Wright's movie is part greatest-hits compilation, part remix, a high-speed all-access tour of car-chase movies that still manages to find a new route. It's studded with cameos from the worlds of music and film, the most substantial (and nerdy) of which comes as such an unexpected surprise that I gasped out loud in the theater. Wright's most novel idea is to approach the heist movie like one of Michael Powell's "composed films," where every element plays its part in a larger symphony.

A remorselessly entertaining, impeccably assembled action-musical in which cars and people defy the laws of physics and common sense... And unlike, say, a Fast and Furious flick, Wright's movie delivers action that's convincing and concrete — the cars seem real, even when the people don't. This is the kind of pure pop confection that leaves you breathless with admiration for the director's supernatural command of his frame. But it might also leave you a little cold.

This is movie craftsmanship and showmanship of a very high order... "Baby Driver" is a lavishly souped-up gimmick movie, and I don't mean that as a knock. The gimmick here is so good that I actually wanted more of it: more killer tracks, more death-defying car-eography, more chase scenes shot to look like renegade Uber commercials.

There's much to enjoy, including the satisfactions of genuine cinematic craft and technique, qualities that moviegoers can no longer take for granted. The edits snap, the colors pop and the cinematography serves the performances and the story rather than embalming them in an emptily showy, self-regarding directorial conceit. The emotions are mostly rote and cold, but the car chases are hot... with a beat Baby carries with him out of the car whether he's on the stroll or the run.